Number format in excel: Showing % value without multiplying with 100

Question

When I set format of a cell as %, it automatically multiply the value with 100 & show the value. So 5.66 becomes 566 %.

I want to apply % format on a column but want to keep the values same as before. I just want % sign to be shown along with the value. To achieve this, I used following format 0.00##\%

Now I want to show negavtive values in RED color without '-' sign(negative) and the values should be wrapped in brackets. so -5.66 should be shown as (5.66%) in red color.

Please help

Answer 1

You just have to change to a Custom format - right click and select format and at the bottom of the list is custom.

 0.00##\%;[Red](0.00##\%) 

The first part of custom format is your defined format you posted. Everything after the semicolon is for negative numbers. [RED] tells Excel to make the negative numbers red and the () make sure that negative number is in parentheses.

Answer 2

Be aware that a value of 1 equals 100% in Excel's interpretation. If you enter 5.66 and you want to show 5.66%, then AxGryndr's hack with the formatting will work, but it is a display format only and does not represent the true numeric value. If you want to use that percentage in further calculations, these calculations will return the wrong result unless you divide by 100 at calculation time.

The consistent and less error-prone way is to enter 0.0566 and format the number with the built-in percentage format. That way, you can easily calculate 5.6% of A1 by just multiplying A1 with the value.

The good news is that you don't need to go through the rigmarole of entering 0.0566 and then formatting as percent. You can simply type

5.66%

into the cell, including the percentage symbol, and Excel will take care of the rest and store the number correctly as 0.0566 if formatted as General.