Often you may want to calculate a reverse percentage in Excel.
For example, the value 48 is 75% of what number?
To calculate this by hand, you would simply do 48 / 0.75 = 64.
To perform this calculation in Excel, assuming 48 is in cell B2 and 75% is in cell C2, you could use the following formula:
=B2/C2
This formula would return the correct value of 64.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: Calculate Reverse Percentage in Excel
Suppose we have the following dataset that shows the number of points scored in the first quarter by various basketball teams along with the percentage of total points that the first quarter points represent:
For example, the Mavs scored 25 points in the first quarter, which represents 20% of their total points scored in the entire game.
To calculate a reverse percentage, i.e. find the total number of points, we could perform the following calculation:
Total Points = 25 / 20% = 25 / 0.20 = 125
We can type the following formula into cell C2 to perform this calculation in our spreadsheet:
=B2/C2
We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column C:
Column D now displays the total points scored by each team.
For example:
- The Mavs scored 25 / 0.20 = 125 total points.
- The Spurs scored 40 / 0.25 = 160 total points.
- The Rockets scored 30 / 0.30 = 100 total points.
- The Kings scored 30 / 0.20 = 150 total points.
And so on.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel:
How to Find the Top 10% of Values in Excel
How to Calculate Average Percentage in Excel
How to Find Percentage of Two Numbers in Excel
