In this tutorial, you will learn how to display Percentage of Total in a Pivot Table in Google Sheets.
How To Display Percentage of Total in Pivot Table in Google Sheets
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If you have a dataset with a ton of data, it can be helpful to summarize it using a pivot table. The Pivot Table can summarize a lot of your data by calculating counts, averages, sums, and more.
One useful feature of pivot tables is the ability to display the percentage of the total for each row. This can be helpful in understanding the relative importance of each row and how it contributes to the grand total.
For example, instead of displaying that the continent of Asia has a total population of 4.6B people, your Pivot Table may show that the continent’s percentage of the grand total is 59.5%.
In this guide, we will show you how to display the percentage of the total in a Pivot Table in Google Sheets.
How to Show the Percentage of Total Field in a Google Sheets Pivot Table
Here’s how to show the Percentage of Total field in a Google Sheets pivot table.
Step 1
First, we’ll add a new value to our current Pivot Table. We can do this by clicking the Add button to the right of the Values label under the Pivot Table editor.
In this example, our current Pivot Table has a numeric value field that outputs the number of orders per shirt size. We want to create a second value field that converts this number into a percentage of the total.
Step 2
Select the field you want to display as a percentage of the grand total.
In this example, we will create a count of the order_number field.
Step 3
Next, we’ll indicate how we want to summarize this new value.
Google Sheets may select SUM by default. We must change this to COUNT to match the first value field in our Pivot Table.
Step 4
Next, we will have to select the % of grand total option from the drop-down list labeled ‘Show as’.
Step 5
Instead of showing the actual count per row, the new value field will display the percentage of the grand total.
Step 6
You may rename the headers for both value fields to add clarity and avoid confusion.
Summary
This guide should be everything you need to display the percentage of the total in a Pivot Table in Google Sheets.
You may make a copy of this example spreadsheet to test it out on your own.