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About percentages in Excel
Niek Otten, July 26 2006
In Excel, percentages are stored as fractions; 15% is stored as 0.15, 100% as 1. That makes it easy to calculate with; just
multiply a number with a percentage and you get what you need. No need to divide/multiply by 100. In fact, if you see a
calculation with percentages which has the number 100 somewhere in the formula; be very careful, it might be wrong or at least use
percentages in a way they weren't meant to be used in Excel.
The conversion to a fraction happens automatically if you enter the % sign: if you enter "15%" (without the quotes) the
value will be 0.15 and it will be displayed as 15%. If you then enter 12 in the same cell, two things can happen: It will be the
number 12 or 12%. What happens in your case depends on a setting:
Tools>Options, Edit tab, "Enable automatic percent entry" (only Excel2000 and newer).
All built-in functions of Excel and all the functions in Analysis Toolpak use this representation of percentages: be careful
when supplying parameters to these functions; never use whole numbers (like 8), always use fractions (like 0.08 or, even better,
8%).
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q:
I have A1 and B1. How do I get C1 to show B1 as a percentage of A1?
A:
Formula in C1: =B1/A1, Format as %
Q:
I have A1 and B1. How do I show the difference as a percentage in C1?
A:
As a percentage of A1: =(B1-A1)/A1, Format as %
As a percentage of B1: =(B1-A1)/B1, Format as %
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Kind regards,
Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel
| hI
| I can't seem to get excel to show my the right numbers in percent format
| i'm dividing a cell of 3000 by a cell of 342 and i get 8.771929825. if i try
| to switch this to percentages i get 877%.
|
| what am i doing wrong?
|
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