Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Editing a Scenario.

Editing a Scenario

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 12, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365

1

Once a scenario is saved, you can later edit it without the necessity of editing the worksheet and resaving the scenario. Instead, you use the Scenario Manager to do the editing. Follow these steps:

  1. Display the Data tab of the ribbon.
  2. Click the What-If Analysis tool in the Forecast group (Data Tools group in older versions of Excel) and then click Scenario Manager. Excel displays the Scenario Manager dialog box.
  3. Highlight the name of the scenario whose values you want to change.
  4. Click on the Edit button. Excel displays the Edit Scenario dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

    5. Figure 1. The Edit Scenario dialog box.

  5. Change the name of the scenario, cell range it refers to, or any comments or notes, as desired.
  6. Click on the OK button. Excel displays the Scenario Values dialog box. (See Figure 2.)

    7. Figure 2. The Scenario Values dialog box.

  7. Change the values stored in the scenario, as desired.
  8. Click on the OK button. Your changes are saved and the Scenario Manager is again displayed.
  9. Repeat steps 3 through 8 for any other scenarios you want to change.
  10. Click on Close to dismiss the Scenario Manager.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (8569) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Editing a Scenario.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Mail Merge and Data Source Documents become Unattached

When you create a mail merge document, you attach it to a data source that is the basis for the information to be merged ...

Discover More

Updating Many Template References

Documents rely on templates. If you change the location of those templates (on purpose or by accident), Word can take a ...

Discover More

Creating an AutoText List

The AUTOTEXTLIST field is one of those esoteric fields that you may know nothing about. The cool thing it does is it ...

Discover More

Excel Smarts for Beginners! Featuring the friendly and trusted For Dummies style, this popular guide shows beginners how to get up and running with Excel while also helping more experienced users get comfortable with the newest features. Check out Excel 2019 For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Creating Scenarios

Excel allows you to create different scenarios for the data in your worksheet. These can be saved and managed using the ...

Discover More

Creating Scenario Summaries

If you've defined a variety of scenarios for your workbook, Excel can provide a handy way to compare the effects of those ...

Discover More

Showing a Scenario

When you create and save scenarios in a workbook, you can later pull them out and display them. Here's how to do it.

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is nine more than 4?

2022-02-16 12:47:50

Tomek

One possible, but may be not well known, use of scenarios is for spreadsheets that you need to have available in more that one language.
Simply select the cells with textual information and create a scenario in, say, English. Then add another scenario with the same information in the second language. You can do the editing via scenario manager, as Allen described, or first change the cells directly, then select them to create the second (and possibly more scenarios).

Another benefit is that you still can have separate independent scenarios for other numeric or non numeric data. And it definitely beats maintaining and updating multiple files for multiple languages.

Please respond if you find this comment useful.

This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.

Links and Sharing
OUR COMPANY
OUR PRODUCTS
OUR SITES
 

Copyright © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.