Microsoft Office 2010 In Depth

16. Validating and Analyzing Worksheet Data

Excel provides you with very powerful capabilities for analyzing worksheet data. Even the most elegant data analysis, however, won’t mean much if you have incorrect data in a worksheet.

In this chapter we look at Excel’s data validation features. You can create data validation rules that greatly cut down the possibility of data being entered into a worksheet incorrectly. We also discuss Excel’s tools for analyzing worksheet data. We will look at the data table feature and the Scenario Manager, which both provide you with the ability to do a what-if analysis of your worksheet data. Coverage is also provided of Goal Seek and the Solver, both of which enable you to derive values based on a predefined ...