Peter Kragelund – April 2011 – Aarhus School of Business / AU

Please send corrections at peterkragelund@gmail.com 1 of 2

Installing Solver in Microsoft Excel for Mac.

What is Excel Solver. The solver add-in has long been a cherished tool for people using Microsoft excel. Basically solver functions in much the same way as the goal seek func-tion we have already used in class, in the sense that it tries du guess the number that fulfills our requirement, but solver is more advanced because it can also minimize and maximize a value, and also do this under restrains that we have the possibility to define.

Unfortunately Microsoft has not included solver in the out-of-the-box solution for Mac user, as they have for PC users, however there is a solution for this.

How do I get Solver for Mac Excel? First of all, you have to figure out which version of Microsoft Excel for Mac you have, the 2008 version or the 2011 version. You can see this when you start excel, where the program, while starting up, will state which version is installed. If you are still do not have a functioning version of Office for Mac 2011 can be bought at a huge discount, if you are a student at Aarhus Univer-sity (including ASB) at aarhus.onthehub.com.

2011 version: Open your safari browser and go to: http://www.solver.com/mac/dwnmac2011solver.htm

Next, fill out the formula, stating that you are a student, and the personal in-fo, and press ”Download Now”. Safari will now download solver.pkg, which you can open from your transfer window, and install, the standard place it will install is under applications.

Next step is to open Excel, press Tools in your menu, and in the present drop down menu select Add-ins. In the box that pops up, press ”select” and go to folder /Applications/Solver. Here you select the file solver.xlam, and ok.

Now the solver function will be available under Tools in your excel menu.

2008 version: To use Solver, you must have Excel 12.1.2 or a newer version, to check this go to press Excel in the Excel menu, and “about Excel”. If you have an older ver-sion update it right away.

Peter Kragelund – April 2011 – Aarhus School of Business / AU

Please send corrections at peterkragelund@gmail.com 2 of 2

Next:

Open your safari browser and go to: http://www.solver.com/mac/dwnmacsolver.htm

Next, fill out the formula, stating that you are a student, and the personal in-fo, and press ”Download Now”. Safari will now download solver.app.zip, which you can see in your transfer menu, where you should press ”view in finder”. Next manually move the app form your transfers to your applications folder, where you will need to start it every time you have to use it.

Using solver in excel mac 2008 is a little more buggy then in the 2011 version or on PC. This means that if you do not use it right it might crash, but it should work right if you keep the following.

-­‐ Do not change cells in excel, while solver is calculating, as this will al-most certain make it crash.

-­‐ Close the solver app every time you change cells in excel, also in other excel sheets that you might have open.

And there you go, you are now ready to use Solver in you Mac version of Mi-crosoft Excel.