From the course: Learning Excel: Data Analysis

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Forecast future results

Forecast future results - Microsoft Excel Tutorial

From the course: Learning Excel: Data Analysis

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Forecast future results

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When you have historical data, Excel can help you estimate what might happen next, assuming the current trend continues. And that's useful for questions like, are sales likely to keep increasing? Should we plan for a busier period? Or does the current trend suggest we need to investigate something? To forecast future results, we need two things, a timeline and a value to forecast. Here, the timeline is the date field and the value is the sales. To create the forecast, select the data, then on the data tab, we want a forecast sheet. Excel opens a preview showing the historical data in blue, plus the forecast of values in orange. It defaults to a line chart, which is perfect because we're working with sales over time, but you can change it to a column chart. I'll leave it at line chart. Then you can set the forecast end date. For example, I might want to forecast three months beyond the current data, or if I have a lot of historical data, I might feel more confident forecasting further…

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