Goal Seek Excel command

City Financial Models • 12 August 2019

Goal Seek

Often there is a situation where you need to find the value of an input which gives you a desired result.

For example in break even analysis, how many items do you need to sell a year to break even.

You could manually input the sales volume until you find the profit is zero, or you could use the Goal Seek command. Excel will then use the iterative technique to find the sales volume which results in a zero profit.

The big limitation is that Goal Seek can only be used on a singular cell and not on a range of inputs or results.

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Spill Error - Why doesn’t my Index Match work in Excel 365.

by City Financial Models • 27 May 2020

This something we are starting to see as we work across a number of different versions of Excel. Recently, Microsoft rolled out something called dynamic array formulas in Excel 365, which is a substantial change from previous versions. Dynamic array formulas automatically spill in to neighbouring blank cells. They have also added some very powerful new functions such as FILTER, UNIQUE, XLOOKUP and XMATCH. Even better there is no need to enter array formulas with control + shift + enter (CSE) as in other versions. However, because of the way dynamic arrays work, there will be instances where models built in other versions will have formulas which unintentionally now try to spill or populate into neighbouring cells when opened in Excel 365. Hence the Spill error. To overcome this, the @ character is added automatically to stop formulas unintentionally spilling multiple results into neighbouring cells. Because dynamic arrays are only available in the subscription version at the moment and not in the other versions, these powerful new functions may cause some compatibility issues. In general, the @ character should overcome the compatibility issues with models build in other versions to work in Excel 365, however the dynamic array functions at present will not work in non-subscription versions so should be used with caution if you aren’t sure of your final audience.