Divide cells or numbers

Let's say you want to find out how many person hours it took to finish a project (total project hours ÷ total people on project) or the actual miles per gallon rate for your recent cross-country trip (total miles ÷ total gallons). Excel gives you several ways to divide numbers.

Note:  There is no DIVIDE function in Excel.

Divide numbers in a cell

To do this task, use the / (forward slash) arithmetic operator.

For example, if you type =10/5 in a cell, the cell displays 2.

Important: Be sure to type an equal sign (=) in the cell before you type the numbers and the / operator; otherwise, Excel will interpret what you type as a date. For example, if you type 7/30, Excel may display 30-Jul in the cell. Or, if you type 12/36, Excel will first convert that value to 12/1/1936 and display 1-Dec in the cell.

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Divide numbers by using cell references

Instead of typing numbers directly in a formula, you can use cell references, such as A2 and A3, to refer to the numbers that you want to divide and divide by.

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A Data 15000 12 Formula Description (Result) =A2/A3 Divides 15000 by 12 (1250)

Divide a column of numbers by a constant number

Suppose you want to divide each cell in a column of seven numbers by a number that is contained in another cell. In this example, the number you want to divide by is 3, contained in cell C2.

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A B C Data Formula Constant 15000 =A2/$C$2 3 12 =A3/$C$2 48 =A4/$C$2 729 =A5/$C$2 1534 =A6/$C$2 288 =A7/$C$2 4306 =A8/$C$2

1. Type =A2/$C$2 in cell B2. Be sure to include a $ symbol before C and before 2 in the formula.

   Using $ symbols tells Excel that the reference to C2 is "absolute," which means that when you copy the formula to another cell, the reference will always be to cell C2. If you didn't use $ symbols in the formula and you dragged the formula down to cell B3, Excel would change the formula to =A3/C3, which wouldn't work, because there is no value in C3

2. Drag the formula in B2 down to the other cells in column B.

   

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