The Answer Report provides basic information about the decision variables and the constraints, with their original and final values. It also gives you a quick way to determine which constraints are "binding" or satisfied with equality at the solution, and which constraints have slack. An example Answer Report for the Product Mix problem is shown below.
First shown are the objective function (target cell) and decision variables (adjustable cells), with their original value and final values. Next are the constraints, with their final cell values; a formula representing the constraint; a "status" column showing whether the constraint was binding or non-binding at the solution; and the slack value -- the difference between the final value and the lower or upper bound imposed by that constraint. A binding constraint, which is satisfied with equality, will always have a slack of zero.
Note: When creating a report, the Solver constructs the entries in the Name column by searching for the first text cell to the left and the first text cell above each adjustable (changing) cell and each constraint cell. If you lay out your Solver model in tabular form, with text labels in the leftmost column and topmost row, these entries will be most the most useful -- as in the example above. Also note that the formatting for the Original Value, Final Value and Cell Value is "inherited" from the formatting of the corresponding cell in the Solver model.