As in "Excel" to calculate percentages: key concepts

Today, many computer users are interested in the question of how to calculate the interest in "Excel". This is relevant, because spreadsheets often contain data in numbers. When it comes to Excel, the topic of percentage and interest differences are often addressed.

Interest 101

While Excel can do many things, the program is not able to teach you math. Therefore, some basic knowledge you should be present. To show the number as a percentage in Excel, you must use a specially designed format for this. To use it, select the cells that you want to format, and then click the Percent button in the Number group on the Home tab (located on the ribbon). Talking about how to calculate percentages in Excel, we note that this is even faster if you use the hot key combination Ctrl + Shift +%.

In Excel, the base value is always stored in decimal form. Thus, even if you used special formatting to display something in percentage (10%), this would be a symbolic representation of the base value. In other words, Excel always performs calculations in decimal (0.1). To recheck it, select the cell, press Ctrl + 1 and look in the sample field in the "General Category".

Basic concepts

Formatting as a percentage may seem rather complicated. Therefore, in order to understand how to calculate interest in Excel, you must consider the following.

The format of the existing value : when applying the value in percent in a cell that already has data, Excel multiplies this number by 100 and adds the% sign at the end. This leads to confusion, so you must carefully understand what is happening.

Let's assume that you type 10 in cell A2 and then use the% format. Because Excel displays a multiple of 100 to show it as a percentage (remember that 1% is one part out of a hundred), you'll see that 1000% is displayed in the cell, not 10%. To work around this problem, you can calculate your percentage values first. For example, if you enter the formula = 10/100 in cell A2, Excel will print the result as 0.1. If you then can format the decimal data, the number will be displayed as 10% - the way you would expect. You can also simply enter the number in decimal form directly into the cell, that is, enter 0.1, and then apply the percentage format. This will also help if you are looking for an opportunity, like in Excel, to add interest or to make other actions with them.

Empty cell format : Excel behaves differently when you preformat empty cells, and then enter numbers. Numbers equal to or greater than 1 are converted to percentages by default; Numbers less than 1, which are not negative, are multiplied by 100 to convert them into percentages. For example, if you type 10 or 0.1 in a reformatted cell, you will see a 10% value that appears. Now, if you enter 0.1, you will see that the displayed value changes. This can also demonstrate how to deduct interest in Excel.

Format when typing : If you enter 10% directly into the cell, Excel automatically applies percentage formatting. This is useful when you want to enter only one percent on a sheet, for example, the amount of tax or commission.

Calculation of interest

As with entering any formula in Excel, you must start writing the value by entering an equal sign (=) in the selected cell. The basic formula for calculating interest in Excel is that it looks like this: = B2 / C2.

Another example would be a more complex calculation. So, if you want to reduce a certain amount by 25%, when trying to apply a discount, your formula will take the following form: = B2 * (1-C2). To increase the volume by 25%, you should replace the minus sign in the formula by plus.