Nifty Excel Trick #1: Format Percentages Correctly

I work a lot with Excel and occasionally have to search the web to remember how to do a seemingly simple task. A common problem is when Excel thinks a number you entered as a percent should be multiplied by 100 rather than by .01.

For example, you have several numbers like so:

You want them to be formatted like percents rather than numbers so you hit the thinking that will solve your problem but Excel goofs it up and makes it look like this:


WTF! That's not what you wanted. Why did it do that! If you've got a ton of numbers you aren't excited about having to manually go in and delete all those zeros but wait there is an easier way.
You could insert a column next to the column you want formatted and add a formula (e.g. =A1*.01) like so:

Now it will have it in the right format and you can now hit the % button to make it work:

Copy the formula down by dragging that little black square in your highlighted cell or double click it and "boom goes the dynamite!":

Why Blog?

Wow. My first entry on my blog. I've been keeping a personal hand written journal for years but have never gotten around to posting stuff on a blog. The reason being, I could not see the use but now that I've embraced web 2.0 I understand why this means of communication is so great. Over my years of surfing the web I've come to find myself reading other people's blogs more than the main stream websites. Mainly because people post stuff that you won't find on the big websites. Microsoft is a good example. As great of a software company as they are everyone will agree that their understanding of users is pretty pathetic. When I upgraded to Office 2007 I wanted to keep 2003 but despite Microsoft's attempt to make it easy there was/is several bugs that users have had to suffer through. Luckily a guy who worked at Microsoft had a personal blog devoted to helping users make the switch.

As an IT guy, political enthusiast (thanks to Ron Paul), economic theorist (thanks to Adam Smith), and religious/philosophical/theologian fan (thanks to many but mostly to John Piper & Ravi Zacharias) I hope to share my thoughts and findings with the rest of the world.