Today, many computer users are interested in the question of how to calculate interest in Excel. This is relevant because spreadsheets often contain data in numbers. When it comes to Excel, the topic of percentages and percentages difference is quite often addressed.
Interest 101
While Excel can do many things, the program is not able to teach you math. Therefore, some basic knowledge you must have. To show the number as a percentage in Excel, you must use a format specially designed for this. To use it, select the cells that you want to format, and then click the "Percentage" button in the "Number" group on the "Home" tab (located on the ribbon). Speaking about how to calculate interest 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 as a percentage (10%), it will be a symbolic representation of the base value. In other words, Excel always performs calculations in decimal value (0,1). To double-check it, select the cell, press Ctrl + 1 and look in the sample field in the "General category".
Basic concepts
Percent formatting may seem rather complicated. Therefore, to understand how to calculate interest in Excel, you should consider the following.
Format of existing value : when applying a percentage value 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 say you type 10 in cell A2 and then apply the% format. Since Excel displays the number in multiples of 100 to show it as a percentage (remember that 1% is one part in a hundred), you will see that 1000% is displayed in the cell, not 10%. To get around this problem, you can calculate your percentage values first. For example, if you enter the formula = 10/100 in cell A2, Excel will output the result as 0.1. If you can then format the decimal data, the number will be displayed as 10% - just as you would expect. You can also simply enter the number in decimal form directly into the cell, i.e. enter 0.1, and then apply the percentage format. This will help if you are looking for an opportunity to add interest to "Excel" or perform other actions with them.
Empty Cell Format : Excel behaves differently when you pre-format empty cells, and then enter numbers. Numbers equal to and greater than 1 are converted to percent by default; digits smaller than 1, which are not negative, are multiplied by 100 to convert them to percentages. For example, if you enter 10 or 0.1 into a reformatted cell, you will see a 10% value appear. Now, if you enter 0.1, you will see that the displayed value changes. It can also demonstrate how to deduct interest in Excel.
Input format : If you enter 10% directly into a cell, Excel automatically applies percentage formatting. This is useful when you want to enter only one percent per sheet, for example, the amount of tax or commission.
Interest calculation
As with entering any formula in Excel, you should start writing down the value by entering an equal sign (=) in the selected cell. The basic formula for calculating interest in Excel is something like this: = B2 / C2.
Another example would be a more complex calculation. So, if you want to reduce a certain amount by 25% when you try 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 with a plus.