How to Calculate Percentages in Excel.

Introduction

Can you sometimes be required to calculate percentages in Excel for your expenditures, sales, commissions, taxes, marks, or any other uses? Excel has simple check buttons to calculate percentages in a few seconds. 

This tutorial includes an overview of percentages, percentage calculation formulas, Excel functions, and more tips and tricks about percentage calculations you may not know. If you are a student, an employee, a business person, or just a person who uses Excel occasionally, continue to read below to improve your Excel knowledge.

Calculating Simple Percentages 

For those who might be having a little difficulty understanding what a percentage is, let me first take the time to explain it to you. A percentage is a part of 100 percent or a ratio of an amount to one hundred. It is obtained by expressing the fraction of a part out of the whole and converting the result to a percentage. For instance, one can divide the number 25 by 100 and the quotient obtained is 0. 25, while multiplying by 100 yields the figure 25 percent.

To calculate simple percentages in Excel:

1. Write down the part number and whole number in the cell like 25 and 100.  

2. In another cell, put the division of the part number from the whole number using the division operator that we used for the whole numbers (e. g. type =B2/B3).

3. Right-click on the cell and then click format cell, and select the category percentage to be able to display the decimal as a percentage (for example 25%).

Easy, right? Let it be discussed in detail now regarding some examples.

Useful Percentage Calculation Examples 

Here are some common useful examples for calculating percentages in Excel: 

Sales Commissions – Put the figure of total sales in cell B2 and the percentage of commission in cell B3. To calculate the amount of the commission, type the formula =B2*B3 in cell B4.

Taxes – Input the bill amount in cell B2, and the taxable percentage in cell B3. To find out the tax amount use =B2*B3 on the cell as shown in the figure below: 

Expenses – Input total expense in column B2, and expense in column B3. Find out each person’s expense ratio with =B3/B2.

Test score – input an exam score in B2 and the total score in B3. To calculate the grade percentage use the formula =B2/B3.

Specials – Original price in B2, discount rate in B3. Discount amount calculation is =B2*B3.

There are still many other examples that you might need to calculate percentages for, depending on your task or concern. They are very much alike and all that is required is to divide the part by the whole and then convert this result to a percentage.

Helpful Percentage Tricks On the Tip of Your Fingers

Here are two handy tips to make working with percentages in Excel even easier:

1. To apply percentage formatting on the Excel data, you need to go to the Home tab and select the Percentage Format button which will immediately convert a decimal number displayed in the selected cell to percentage. Note that there is no need to multiply by 100 in the first two steps of the MSA-MCC model. 

2. Show percentage automatically in a cell. Some of them are just entering a number decimal, for instance, to type 10% – type 0. 1. Excel will automatically show 10% Placement: On the right side of the cell, there is a small green triangle that will show 10% when you just type excel.

Conclusion & Next Steps 

As you have seen, calculating percentages in Excel is easy for the following reasons. All that has to be done is to divide the part by the whole and the percentage can be obtained by formatting. It is recommended to start by employing the formulas and examples that I presented above. 

What other tips and tricks about Excel would you be interested in knowing? What other instance is there in your work or academics that you are currently or have recently calculated percentages for? Please leave a comment below to let me know about your view. As you can see, it’s quite easy for me to produce additional content so that you can be a master of Excel.