Percentages in Excel

There are many ways to format a cell as a percentage in Excel. This lesson goes over the following five ways.

Number and % symbol
Format Cell
Number Format Menu
% Style Button
Format Several Cells At Once

Number and % symbol

Type a number into the cell.

At the end of the number, type the % symbol.

Press Enter.

This will automatically tell Excel that the number you typed is a percentage, and it will format the cell as a percentage cell. Any number you put in the cell thereafter will appear with a % symbol.

Format Cell

Right click on the cell you want to display as a percentage.

A menu will appear. Select the Format Cell item on the list.
This is an image of a menu bar. The mouse is hovering over the “Format Cell” item on the list, indicating that we have to click on that item.

This will bring up the Format Cell window.

Under the Numbers tab, you will see a category list of all the number formats you can assign to a cell. Select the Percentage category.
This is an image of the format cells window. Under the numbers tab is a list of all number formats assignable to a cell. The mouse is hovering over the Percentage category.

Notice that you can change the number of decimal places displayed in the Decimal places box. You can use this box to adjust the decimal places no matter what approach you originally used to format the cell as a percentage.

Number Format Menu

In the Home Toolbar, you will find the number format menu box. The default in the box says General.
This is an image of the Home Toolbar. On the right side, the the number format menu box is circled orange, indicating that's what we're looking for. The default in the box says “General.”

Select the arrow to the right of the box to view the other options. Select the Percentage item on the list.
This is an image of a dropdown menu of the number format menu box. In it, the mouse is hovering over percentage indicating that we have to click on it.

This will automatically format the cell as a percentage with two places after the decimal point. You can adjust the places after the decimal point using the format cell technique explained above.

% Style Button

Select the cell you want to format by clicking within it.

Select the Percent Style button in the Home Toolbar. It is a button with a % symbol on it.
This is an image of part of the Home Toolbar. It shows a button with a % symbol in it. The mouse is hovering over it, indicating, that we have to click on it.

This will format the cell to display as a percentage.

Format Several Cells At Once

Highlight all the cells you want to format as a percentage.

Example image:
This is an image of some highlighted cells in an Excel sheet. The highlighted items are surrounded by a green line, and have grey background.

Once the cells are selected, use either the Format Cell, Number Format Menu, or Percent Style button technique to format the cells as percentages.

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