Percentage Showing as Thousand in Excel (Reason and Solution)

The percentage is the ratio of one number compared with the total presented in terms of 100. The use of percentages is very common in today’s life. Mostly, it is used to compare performance, forecasting, etc. In Excel, we have formulas to show any value in percentage form or there are dedicated features to show value in percentage. But sometimes we do not get accurate values in percentage format due to some silly mistakes. In this article, we will show to solve a problem as a percentage is showing as thousand in Excel with proper illustrations.

Why Is Excel Showing Wrong Percentages?

Before solving the mentioned problem of percentage as shown in percentage, we must know the reason for this problem.

We know there is a dedicated feature in Excel for cell formatting for percentages. If we apply this cell formatting after inserting values in the cell a problem will show.

We have a dataset with percentage values.

Now, change the format of those cells into percentages.

What is this? Percentages are shown in thousands.

It means if we change the cell format after inserting values this problem will occur. It multiples the existing values by 100 and returns a value.

Another formatting problem occurs when we change the format of the cells before inserting data.

First, we change the format of all cells in Percentage.

Now, insert data in different cells. Look at the dataset.

We input 10 on Cell C5 and .1 on Cell C10. Those values are not the same anyone will say this. But in our dataset, both are showing the same value in percentage form. So, we find out two problems here. We will discuss their solutions in the below section.

Percentage Showing as Thousand in Excel: 2 Solutions

We will show 2 solutions to the above-mentioned problems. We will use some tricks to apply the features. Look at the below section.

Solution 1: Input Decimal Values and Then Apply Percentage Format

This is the solution to the 1st problem. Previously we inserted full numbers in the dataset.

📌 Steps:

Now, we will insert values in decimal format in the Profit Percentage column.

After that, change the format of the cells from the Number group.
Choose the Percentage as the format of cells.
Then, click on the Increase Decimal button to unhide the lost decimal points.

Finally, we get the appropriate percentage value in the result.

Solution 2: Divide the Percentage Value by 100

The previous solution applies to a small amount of data. But if we have data with huge quantities, that time it will be possible to manually insert the data again in the dataset. For that, here is an easy solution.

📌 Steps:

We have already seen that that percentage is showing in thousands. Now, add a new column on the right side of the dataset.

We already formatted the cells of the mentioned column in percentage format adding decimal places.

Go to Cell D5 and put the formula.

=C5/100

This formula is divided by 100.

Then press the Enter button and Drag the Fill Handle button.

We can see a thousand values have been removed and showing in the appropriate format.

Download Practice Workbook

Download this practice workbook to exercise while you are reading this article.

Percentage Showing as Thousand.xlsx

Conclusion

In this article, we find out the reason why the percentage is showing as a thousand in Excel. After that, we described 2 solutions to resolve those problems. I hope this will satisfy your needs. If you have better methods, questions, or feedback regarding this article, please don’t forget to share them in the comment box.

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