Five Microsoft Excel Features to Enhance Financial Analysis

Abstract

The Microsoft Excel program contains hundreds of useful
features but it can be daunting to identify appropriate
applications. In this paper I demonstrate how five features can
enhance financial analysis. The features are applied in a capital
budgeting context but could also be utilized in other financial
contexts including forecasting, valuation and working capital
management. The features examined are: the choose function to
create scenarios, data validation to restrict selections, data
tables for sensitivity analysis, conditional formatting to highlight
key results and scenarios under consideration and concatenation
to string together text and formula results.