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Kathy5FFA
Kathy5FFA
Inspiring
March 6, 2025
Answered

Format Text as a Percentage

  • March 6, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1039 views

Hello. Is there a way to create a style or a grep that will automatically convert text to a percentage format? So for example if I type "25.5" into a text box, it automatically adds a "%" at the end to make it "25.5%"? Similar to how it works in cell formatting in Excel? I have a file that includes a lot of numbers that need to be typed in so not having to type the % character or paste it in every time would save me some time. Thank you.

Correct answer jmlevy

GREP styles (and character styles generally speaking) do not add any character, they format the text so it won't be possible that way. But you could run a find-change to add a percentage sign after all the numbers formatted in a defined style.

2 replies

jmlevy
Community Expert
jmlevyCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
March 6, 2025

GREP styles (and character styles generally speaking) do not add any character, they format the text so it won't be possible that way. But you could run a find-change to add a percentage sign after all the numbers formatted in a defined style.

Kathy5FFA
Kathy5FFAAuthor
Inspiring
March 6, 2025

That could work, thank you. Also is there a way to format a table cell to convert a number to a specific format like converting 1200 to 1,200 or 100 to 100.00 like in Excel? Just trying to save time from typing commas, decimals, etc. 

jmlevy
Community Expert
jmlevyCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 6, 2025

This is amazing. It worked. Thank you very much! Would there happen to be a grep resource available somewhere that can be kind of an index of different grep values you can use?


Would there happen to be a grep resource available somewhere that can be kind of an index of different grep values you can use?

@Peter Kahrel which is very active on this forum wrote one book (maybe more than one) about GREP.

    J
    Community Expert
    Jeffrey_SmithCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 6, 2025

    I imagine there will be numbers that are not suppose to be formatted as a percentage. If this is the case, is there anything that distinguishes a percent number from a non-percent number?

    Kathy5FFA
    Kathy5FFAAuthor
    Inspiring
    March 6, 2025

    It would be an entire table column or row so I'd like to create a paragraph or character style that when applied to any number, it would convert it to a percentage. That way I can set all numbers in a particular row to be percentages.

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