Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. 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, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021

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, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. 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. ...

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What is two 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.

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