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Get original price from percentage discount

Excel formula: Get original price from percentage discount
Generic formula 
=price/(1-discount)
Summary 

To calculate the original price from a sale price and percentage discount, you can use a formula that divides the sale price by 1 minus the discount percentage. In the example shown, the formula in cell E5 is:

=C5/(1-D5)

The results in column E are decimal values with the percentage number format applied.

Explanation 

In this example, the goal is to determine the original price from a discounted price (sale price) and the percentage discount. For example, given a sale price of $60.00, and a discount of 10%, we want a result of $70.00 for the original price. The discounted price is in column C and the percentage discount is in column D. The general formula for this calculation, where "x" is the original price, is:

x=price/(1-discount)
x=63/(1-10%)
x=63/(0.90)
x=70.00

Converting this to an Excel formula with cell references, the formula in E5 becomes:

=C5/(1-D5)
=63/(1-0.1)
=63/0.9
=70.00

As the formula is copied down, it returns the original for each item in the table, based on the percentages shown in column D.

Formatting percentages in Excel

In mathematics, a percentage is a number expressed as a fraction of 100. For example, 95% is read as "ninety-five percent" and is equivalent to 95/100 or 0.95. Accordingly, the values in column D are decimal values, with the Percentage number format applied.

Author 
Dave Bruns
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