Watch Window
- 02:18
Understand how to modify cells from anywhere in a workbook with the Watch Window
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Add Watch Stress Testing ModelsTranscript
You can access the watch window using the shortcut alt, M, W. And the great thing about the watch window is that it allows you to monitor cells wherever you are in the workbook. For example, you may want to see what happens to your bounce check row when you play around with the assumptions. So you might be stress testing a model and you want to ensure that when you make changes to some of the assumptions, it continues to balance. So what you can do is select the cell references at the bottom of your balance sheet and as you make changes to the adjustments, to the assumptions, you can check that the value continues to say, "Okay". The shortcut to add the watch window is alt, M, W. And the window can sit here, floating around your screen or alternatively you can attach it to the top of the screen. It's up to you. I prefer to have it attached to the top of the screen. So I'm gonna move mine up there. Now what we want to do is decide what we want to watch. So I'm gonna go down to the example model tab and I wanna see what's happening to my balance sheet. I want to make sure it continues to balance as I play around with some of the assumptions. So I go to the bottom of the balance sheet. I can select the cells I want to watch. Now you can do one cell or multiple cells. I'm going to select this entire range and I'm going to click on the Add Watch button in the watch window, okay? And that gives me the option. Now that allows me to watch all of the cells. So you can see it's got cell C78, D78, E78 and that's the cell references there. Then the next column, it tells you the value within each of those cells. So this is perfect for seeing whether or not my model's still balancing. So if I go back up the screen now to the assumptions, oops, gone too far and if I start playing around with the assumptions, what I should see is that the model continues to balance every time I change some things. It's just a great way of making sure that your model is always going to balance, okay? Now the great thing is it doesn't matter what page I go to, I go to any of the other tabs, I can always see the watch window.