Crystal Ball Standard FAQs Frequently Asked Questions

Crystal Ball is for strategic planners, financial analysts, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, CPAs, marketing managers, venture capitalists, consultants, and anyone else who uses spreadsheets to forecast uncertain results. Crystal Ball is taught in the top US business schools and in universities and technical institutions throughout the world.

What versions are currently available?

For Microsoft Excel for Windows

Crystal Ball 7, Standard Edition

Crystal Ball Standard Edition can be bought as single-user license. We offer other flexible licensing options.

What is the difference between the Standard, Professional, and Premium Editions?

Crystal Ball Standard Edition is our Excel-based, stand-alone Monte Carlo simulation package. Standard Edition is used by spreadsheet modelers who need to understand the risks associated with their modeling assumptions.

Crystal Ball Professional Edition is a product suite that includes: Crystal Ball Standard, OptQuest, CB Predictor, the Tools, and the Developer Kits for Crystal Ball and CB Predictor. With the Professional Edition, you can search for optimal answers (e.g., maximize profits or minimize production costs), increase your confidence in the reliability of your forecasts, forecast from your raw historical data, and create your own customized user interface.

Crystal Ball Premium Edition is a product suite that includes: Crystal Ball Standard, OptQuest, CB Predictor, the Tools, the Developer Kits for Crystal Ball and CB Predictor, Real Options Analysis Toolkit, Risk Analysis Using Crystal Ball training CD and two textbooks: Applied Risk Analysis: Moving Beyond Uncertainty in Business, and Real Options Analysis: Tools and Techniques for Valuing Strategic Investments and Decisions.

With the Premium Edition, you can resolve uncertainty using historical data and optimization. Additionally, with Real Options Analysis Toolkit, you can mitigate downside risk and take advantage of upside uncertainties by accounting for the strategic flexibility inherent in the project.

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Is an academic version of Crystal Ball available?

Yes. We make academic versions of Crystal Ball available for a very reduced cost to anyone with a current student, faculty, or other academic ID. The academic version is a fully functional version of Crystal Ball that can be used for one year or two years from the purchase date depending on the license purchased. The academic version is also available as a student lab license. It can be used for anywhere between one year and four years from the purchase date depending on the license purchased.

Japanese language versions of Crystal Ball are available through Kozo Keikaku Engineering, our Japanese distributor.

French language versions are available through Editions MEV, our distributor in France.

Crystal Ball is designed as an Microsoft Excel add-in, so it requires Excel and an understanding of Excel.

Crystal Ball runs optimizations through an add-in product called OptQuest. OptQuest is available in the Crystal Ball Professional and Premium editions.

Yes. Decisioneering has worked with several publishers and authors to help provide textbooks with Crystal Ball discussions and trial versions. These books cover a variety of disciplines from management science to finance to basic risk analysis.

We have a textbook page on our Web site that describes books that contain and/or mention Crystal Ball. You can also order any of these books through Amazon.com.

Yes. We offer introductory, advanced, and customized classes for our software products. These classes are offered all year at sites throughout the US and world.