How to Calculate Percentage Increase Between Three Numbers in Excel

If you are looking for how to calculate percentage increase between multiple numbers in Excel, then you are in the right place. We need to calculate percentages in many aspects of our life. For example, when calculating discounts in shops, bank interest rates, rates of inflation, etc., the percentage is very useful. In this article, we’ll try to show you some basic concepts, formulas, and especially methods about how to calculate percentages between multiple numbers in Excel.

Watch Video – Calculate Percentage Between Multiple Numbers in Excel

What Is Percentage?

A percentage is a number or a ratio that is represented as a fraction of a whole number. For example, X person got 90 marks out of 150. If we want to express the marks of X into a percentage, it will be (90/150) =60%.

How to Calculate Percentage Increase Between Three Numbers in Excel: 2 Ways

We can calculate percentages between two numbers or between multiple numbers. In the case of two numbers, we have to calculate based on the two data, and in the case of multiple numbers, we need to calculate based on multiple numbers. In both cases, the formula is quite similar.
Simply, the formula for the percentage change.

=(new value-old value)/old value*100

Inputting values into the above formula, the output may be positive or negative. The positive number depicts the percentage increase because the new value is higher than the old value.

To show these, we have made a dataset named Dataset of Sales. It has column headers as Stock at January (Unit), Stock at February (Unit), and Stock of March (Unit). The dataset is like this.

We’ll now discuss the ways to calculate percentages.

1. Percentage Change Between Two Numbers

To calculate the percentage change between two numbers, we need to use a simple arithmetic formula. Percentage change can be two types.

Percentage Increase
Percentage Decrease

When the second value i.e. the new value is greater than the first value i.e. old value, then the percentage change becomes positive and it is mainly a percentage increase. On the other hand, when the second value is smaller than the first value, the percentage change becomes negative which means a percentage decrease.
In the figure below, we’ll try to calculate the percentage change between two values in column D. The two values are Stock at January and Stock at February.

We just need to follow the steps below.

Steps:

Type the formula in cell D5 that we mentioned earlier and it is.

=(new value-old value)/old value

In this case, it is.

=(C5-B5)/B5

Here, C5 and B5 refer to the first value of Stock of January i.e. 10, and Stock of February i.e. 15 respectively.

Press ENTER to get the output as 0.5.
Use the Fill Handle by dragging down the cursor while holding the right-bottom corner of the D5 cell like this.

We’ll get the output like this.

Select range B5:B11 > Click the Percentage Style (%) sign of the Number group command.

Finally, we will obtain the following illustration.

In the above figure, especially in the 5th row, we see that the quantity of Stock at February is higher than Stock at January. That’s why we found an increase in the percentage. Similarly, the percentage is increased in the 6th, 7th, and 8th rows. On the contrary, we see that the quantity of Stock at February is lower than that of January in the 9th, 10th, and 11th rows. For this, we found that the percentage has decreased and this situation will happen for every case when the second value is lower than the first value.

2. Percentage Change Among Three or Multiple Numbers

We can also calculate percentage change among three or more numbers by using the arithmetic formula. In this case, the formula is slightly different from the formula in the case of two numbers. Here, we’ll bring the consecutive numbers to calculate percentage change in the formula like this.

=(first value-second value)/(third value-second value)

Here, we have the following dataset where we need to calculate the percentage in column E.

Now, we need to proceed with the following steps:

Steps:

Write the following formula in cell E5 like this.

=(B5-C5)/(D5-C5)

Here, A2 is the first value, which is 10, B2 is the second value which is 5 and C2 is the third value which is 20.

Press ENTER and use the Fill Handle to get the output like this.

Select the range E5:E11 > Click the Percentage Style (%) sign of the Number group command.

Finally, you will get the percentage increase among the three numbers.

Download Practice Workbook

Calculating Percentage Between Multiple Numbers.xlsx

Conclusion

This is the way we can calculate the percentage increase between multiple numbers in Excel. Even if calculating percentages manually is not your favorite work, you can easily calculate using formulas in Excel from now on. I appreciate you for reading this article and leaving any opinions or comments below.