Subtract a Percentage in Excel (Easy Way)

In today’s tutorial I’m going to show you how to subtract percentage in Excel. For conducting the session I’m using Microsoft Excel 2019, you can use the version you have in your PC (Excel 2010, Excel 2013, Excel 2016, Excel 2019) or the web version of Microsoft Excel. Not only that, you can use Google Sheets as well. Plenty of options!

So, further ado, let’s begin today’s journey. But, first things first, let’s know about today’s practice worksheet.

We have two different tables. Table at the top has three columns, Total Amount, Amount Spent, Amount Left. Values are stored in percentage format. Using this table, we will subtract two percentage values.

Table at the bottom has five columns, Cellphone, Price, Price Decrease, Updated Price(Basic), Updated Price(Advanced). By this table, we will subtract a percentage from a value.

Table of Contents hide

Practice Workbook

1. Subtract Percentage Value in Excel

2. Decrease Number by Percentage in Excel

2.1. Conventional Way

2.2. An Advanced Method

Useful Tips

Conclusion

Percentage Subtraction Calculator

Practice Workbook

For your convenience, I have given the link to today’s workbook. You can download it from here.

Subtract a Percentage in Excel

1. Subtract Percentage Value in Excel

If you want to subtract a percentage value from another, it will be the simple minus formula.

Minuend Percentage – Subtrahend Percentage

Minuend is the number, that is to be subtracted from

Subtrahend is the number, that is to be subtracted

So, in simple terms,

The Percentage from which you need to subtract – The Percentage that you need to subtract

Let’s write it in Excel.

We have subtracted Amount Spent from Total Amount and got Amount Left. Simple! Our calculations will be done by using Cell Reference.

Write the formula for the last one. When you have a large data set, it’s useful to use Excel AutoFill.

2. Decrease Number by Percentage in Excel

You may need to subtract a percentage from a value. In this section we will see how to do that. There is a basic formula and an advanced formula to calculate that. I’m listing both methods here. You can choose your preferred one.

2.1. Conventional Way

Let’s see the formula first.

Original Value – (Percentage * Original Value)

Let’s write it on the Excel sheet.

We have multiplied the Price Decrease (Usually for a product decrease percentage means Discount) with Price and subtracted the result from the Price. And it gave the Updated Price.

For the rest of the rows feel free to write the formula or simply use the AutoFill feature of Excel.

2.2. An Advanced Method

Enough of the usual method, let’s do something new. The advanced formula is as follows.

Original Value * (1-Percentage)

When you are going to subtract a percentage from a value, which means you will subtract the Given Percentage of Original value from the 100% of Original Value. You can imagine the value like (100% – Given percentage) of the Original Value. 1 is the decimal equivalent of 100%.

So, when you are subtracting a percentage value from 1, it will subtract the decimal equivalent of that percentage from 1.

Now you can write the formula for the rest of the rows or simply use Excel AutoFill.

Useful Tips

Now you may want to see the values up to a preferred decimal place. You can do that easily. Explore the Number section of the Home tab, you will find Increase Decimal and Decrease Decimal options.

Use the option you like. Here I’m using Decrease Decimal.

Excel will do the calculation automatically to round the figure. You can increase decimal points by using the Increase Decimal option.

You can change decimal in another way also. On the Number section, click on the list icon then go to More Numbers Formats

In the dialog box you will find a placeholder to select decimal places. Feel free to choose how many decimal points you want.

Conclusion

That’s all for today’s session. I tried listing out ways of subtracting a percentage in Excel. Hope you will find it helpful. Do comment if anything seems hard to understand. Let me know which of the options you are going to use. You can also write your own way to do the task.

Percentage Subtraction Calculator

You can use today’s workbook as a calculator to subtract a percentage. You will find the workbook consists of two sheets. For using the calculator, go to the sheet named, Percentage Sub Calculator.