When you're planning or forecasting, you'll often need to work backward from your target to derive the figures you need. For example, when planning your next financial year, you may need to find out how much you need to raise the selling price for your widgets to make an extra $30,000 a year.
To work this out, you can try increasing the unit price for the widgets until your revenue figure is $30,000 higher. But you can save time and effort by using Excel's Goal Seek feature to derive the required price automatically by working backward from the revenue figure.
To derive values using Goal Seek, follow these steps:
Figure 11–16. Use the Goal Seek dialog box to work backward from your desired result to the figure you need.
Figure 11–17. When Excel displays the Goal Seek Status dialog box, look at the value in the target cell in the worksheet. Click the OK button if you want to keep the value. Click the Cancel button if you want to revert to the previous value.
NOTE: If the calculation is straightforward, Goal Seek finds a solution quickly. But if the calculation is more complex, Goal Seek may take a while. If this happens, you can click the Pause button to pause the calculation to see which value Goal Seek is trying at the moment. If you want to follow the individual values Goal Seek is trying, click the Step button to display the next value but keep the calculation paused; keep clicking the Step button as needed to see further values. Click the Resume button when you want Goal Seek to resume the calculation at full speed.
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