Excel Solver

A

Annie

Hi
I am looking for a very simple exercise or sample to show my students how to
use Solver in Excel 2000. I have tried some from the Microsoft manuals but
find they are very complicated. If anyone out there has an easy to use
example I would be forever in your debt!

As I am a trainer I may be able to help others with some examples also.

Many thanks
 
B

Beth Melton

I use it with the PMT function. The PMT function is one almost all
students can relate to since most have borrowed money at some point,
and it is a good example for why the Solver is helpful - everyone
wants to save money! We solve for a fixed monthly payment and I use a
scenario along the lines of: Your budget allows for $450 car payment
per month. What price range should you shop for and what is the
desired interest rate. I usually have a starting payment created in
the workbook.

This also it provides opportunities to return to the Solver and add
Constraints, such as the number of payments must be an Integer, the
solver may happily use an interest rate that is too high or low, etc.

I also combine Scenarios with the Solver since you can easily save the
results of the Solver as a Scenario. This way they can cycle through
the various views in order to determine the best Solver solution.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Office 2007 Preview Site:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
Office 2007 Community Articles/Tutorials:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/article_archive.mspx

TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
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