Excel Solver is used to solve optimization problems, which is like solving equations. In this tutorial, we will give a very simple example on how to use Excel Solver. Basic example Suppose your car is low on gasoline. The gasoline is $3/gallon. You have a budget of $50. How much gasoline can you buy? Of course, for a problem this simple, we do not even need a Solver to solve the problem. However, the purpose is to teach the users how to use Excel Solver, so we make the problem extremely simple. We have the following framework: Goal: maximize quantity of gasoline Relationship: cost=quantity * unit price Constraint: cost<=budget 1. In cell B1, we enter unit price "3", in cell B4, we enter the budget 50. In cell B2, we just enter an arbitrary number as the number of gallons. We entered 5. In cell B3, we enter the formula "=B1*B2" to let it be the cost, which equals to 15. 2. Click Solver under the Data menu. 3. A Solver dialog window pops up. In "Set objective...
Pivot table is a powerful tool to summarize data and examine data patterns in Excel. Suppose we have 200 rows of data from a farmer, which sells fruit (apple, banana, orange) and vegetable (carrot, spinach) to clients in the US or Canada market, like below: 1. Select Insert > PivotTable 2. Click on PivotTable, then select the data range and where to place the PivotTable. When selecting the data range, the header must be selected. 3. Drag "Category" to Row labels, "Item" to Column labels, "Amount" to Values, and at last, drag "Market" to Report Filter. Note: You can user different fields for filter, row label or column label, depending on your business logic. You do not have to fill all the 4 fields, even only dragging the "Amount" into the "Values" field still produces a nice PivotTable. Again, all depend on your business logic. 4. The result is below. Notice that some cells are blank in the PivotTable. The reason is obvio...
Unlike most other Excel functions which deal with a single number, a row or a column, INDEX function deals with a data table. It answers questions such as "what is the number at row 3 and column 4?" In the data range highlighted yellow above, what is the number at row 3 and column 2? Remember we only talk about the data range, not including header row. So the data on row 3 is carrot, not banana. The formula is: =INDEX(A2:B5,3,2) It returns 1.5, which is the price of carrot.
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