=ROUND(B1/B2,0)& “: 1? (put a space between & and “, and also between : and 1)

so you will get 2:1 above instead of 2.2:1

but if you want the ratio to one decimal place try this:

=ROUND(B1/B2,1)& “: 1?

if you want the ratio to two decimal places try this:

=ROUND(B1/B2,2)& “: 1?

etc

In order to produce a ratio to something other than :1, you need to set one of the ratio items and calculate the other. To understand why, look at your example 8:10… that is identical to 16:20 and 4:5 as well as infinitely many other ratios. Here is a general set-up that will allow you to specify the right-hand number (the 10 in 8:10) and calculate the other. Put your staff member count (200) in A1 and your desk count (189) in A2, then put your right-hand target ratio value (10) in B1 and then finally put this formula in whatever cell you want to display the ratio in…

=B1*A2/A1&”:”&B1

You can produce other ratio displays by changing the value in B1 if 10 is not the target value you want for the right-hand number.

Using Excel 2007 – what do I need to do to get the ratio and for it to display as ‘Staff’:'Desks’ ?

Thanks
Richard

I’ve been going through these responses and have tried a few things. Some worked, some didn’t. I have a two part question, though. (1) I am trying to calculate the ratio between two numbers. My spreadsheet looks like this:

I used the ratio formula =”1:”&round(a1/b1, 2). My question is: Is this the correct formula? I know nothing about ratios but I feel like the ratios are incorrect for some reason.

(2) Is there a way to calculate the average of this list of ratios, and present it in ratio form? My boss asked for this and I have no idea if it’s even possible.

This is what you wrote:
It looks to me like it would “department spent/total spent”. That is

$410/$1200, $250/$1200, $315/$1200, $90/$1200, $45/$1200 etc.

And since that only totals 93%, etc pays 7%

Am I missing something here?

My answer. Your answer worked out perfectly in this order.

I used your idea and finally it worked. =total spent/total of all departments (absolute) / 100
I tried to post the sum graphic but unable to.
many thanks.

It doesn’t appear to be working for what I require. Maybe the way I communicated the query.
If I have a total spent expense and I need to divide it over the various departments that have lesser or higher spent. Then the total % has to add up to 100% with none left over. So when I sum up the percentages against the departments it should equal 100%.

Example
total money spent
1966

Department 1 has spent 850 ? xxx% of 1966
Department 2 has spent 950
D. 3 has spent 50
D. 4 has spent 64
D. 5 has spent 52

the percentage ought to value to 100%
Cheers

I tried reversing it but got the order of the quotation marks wrong. I did 1:”0.0? and the result was 1:00!