How to calculate percentages in Google Sheets

Excel is a powerful and widely used spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft. It allows users to store, organize, and analyze data. Excel also provides powerful tools and features for creating charts, graphs, and pivot tables.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to calculate the percentage in Google sheets. In daily routine tasks, we have to calculate the percentage by different methods. Percentages can be found by following methods i.e., 

Percentage of a part to the whole: 

This method involves finding the part and whole of a given value and using the following formula to calculate the percentage, Percentage = (Part/Whole) x 100.

A specific percentage of a number:

When there is a sale or discount on a product, the percentage off may be advertised, and we may need to calculate the new price or discount amount. In this case, we will use the following formula to calculate the specific percentage discount of a number, Number * Percentage / 100

Below are two examples showing the different cases to calculate the percentage.

Example 1 – Calculating the obtained marks percentage

Let’s have an example of calculating the percentage of obtained marks in the transcript. Following is a data set of obtained marks of a student out of the total marks. We want to find the percentage of obtained marks with respect to total marks. The percentage column is red highlighted in the following picture:

Step 1 – Select the appropriate cell to find the percentage

• Select the cell where you want to calculate the percentage of a subject, in our case, it will be D2 for the first subject as shown above;

Step 2 – Enter the formula to calculate the percentage

• In our case, cell C2 represents obtained marks and total marks are available in cell B2. Therefore the formula to calculate the percentage in cell D2 will be, 

=(C2/B2).

• Press the enter key after writing the above formula and this will calculate the percentage for the first subject as shown above.

Step 3 – Apply the formula to the whole dataset

• When you calculate the first result, drag it down till the last row of the data set, as shown above;

Step 4 – Change the format of results to show as a percentage

• Select all the cells with the results of percentages, which are currently shown as numeric values.
• Click on the Format as percentage icon in the menu bar. All the values will be converted into percentages.
• Click on the reduce decimal icon to adjust the values after decimal according to your requirements. In our case, we want to show only the part before decimal values. So, we’ll click on this icon twice to remove the two digits after the decimal point as shown above.

Example 2 – Calculating the specific percentage of a number 

In this example, we will learn how to find the percentage of a particular value with reference to a specific numeric value. In this case, we will have an example of a grocery shop’s items, in which the manager wants to sell his different products at different discounts. We will find a discounted value and discounted retail price.

The formula that we will use to find the percentage of particular numeric values;

= (value * percentage) / 100

Value: the value for which we want to find the percentage

Percentage: the value to the percentage

The percentage means, a part per hundred hence we will divide by 100.

The result value will be in percentage. Above are the given steps to follow;

Step 1 –  Select the cell and Apply the formula

• Select any data cell, in this case, we selected cell H2.
• In our case, cell F2 represents the retail price and discount percentage in cell G2. Therefore, the formula to calculate the discounted value in cell H2 will be, =(F2-G2)/100
• Press the enter key after writing the above formula and this will calculate the percentage for the first product as shown above.

Step 2 – Subtract the percentage value from the retail price

• Select any data cell, in this case, we selected cell I2.
• In our case, cell F2 represents the retail price and discount percentage in cell H2. Therefore, the formula to calculate the discounted retail price value in cell I2 will be, =(F2-H2)
• Press the enter key after writing the above formula and this will calculate the discounted retail price for the first product as shown above.

Hence, it is clear from the above-shown examples we are now able to find percentages by different means.