How to calculate a cumulative (running) percentage
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3Show what share of the total has accumulated by each row — Pareto charts, progress, top-N contribution.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel | =SUM($A$2:A2)/SUM($A$2:$A$100) | Sort descending first for a Pareto. Fill down; format as %. The expanding range is the running total. |
| Google Sheets | =SUM($A$2:A2)/SUM($A$2:$A$100) | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =SUM($A$2:A2)/SUM($A$2:$A$100) | Identical. |
How it works
Two pieces: a running total (the half-anchored range $A$2:A2 grows as you fill down, summing everything from the top to the current row) divided by the grand total (the fully-anchored $A$2:$A$100). By the second row the running sum is 50+30 = 80 out of a 100 total, so 80% has accumulated. Format the column as a percentage. This is the backbone of a Pareto analysis — sort the values largest-first, and the cumulative % shows how few items make up 80% of the whole. The final row always reaches 100%.
Verified, not just documented
We ran =SUM($A$2:A3)/SUM($A$2:$A$4) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 0.8 — exactly the expected result. Every formula here is confirmed by actually executing it.