Spreadsheet: Anyone have one for this?

Just curious, but doesn't the calculator work better? Or do you want this for a more advanced reason?

Using the adjacent distance...

opposite side = adjacent side * tangent of angle

Darrell,

I don't have a good caclulator at work, and I hate pushing more buttons than are absolutely necessary.

I made an autolisp routine for it a few years ago, where I just typed in the angle in dms format, then the dist, and got the answer. But they won't let us use autolisp at work!!@#$%*^&%^!!

I agree a calculator is only a few key strokes. Seems easier than making a spread sheet, and then waiting for it to open every time. A calculator takes less than a minute.

Excel is wonderful.

I don't have this in particular but it isn't too hard to do. It seems to me you convert angles to radians then do the function in Excel.

The biggest problem with doing it in a spreadsheet is the conversion of the angle from Degrees-Mins-Secs to Hours (or Degrees Decimal) for a Trig function to work. If you have a copy of the function to make the conversion, then its not that hard to calculate it even in the spreadsheet.

I would go buy a calculator that has trig functions and makes angle conversions as necessary. I would be so aggravated if I didn't have my HP 32S II calculators! I have one at my desk at work, 2 in the work truck, one at home, and one at my parent's home. The one at my parent's home is special since my late dad used it, and he liked it so much like I do that he put some masking tape on top of it just above the display and wrote on the tape "KEEP YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF!" He didn't like it when others picked it up to use and didn't return it back to his table!

Check out this link...

http://ostermiller.org/calc/triangle.html

That is a great story, Darrell.What did your dad do that he loved the calculator so much?

Don

Surveyor of course! Often times his stuff would grow legs and walk off from time to time. Actually, my brothers and I would grab stuff and do the walking! 😀

That is a great link for triangle calcs. Thank you for sharing it.

Do a search for the 'geofuc' excel add-in, it has several built in functions.

Also found this webpage

http://zonalandeducation.com/mmts/trigonometryRealms/degMinSec/degMinSec.htm

> Do a search for the 'geofuc' excel add-in, it has several built in functions.

Should have said 'geofunc'

Here are the formulas

OK, I decided to work the problem out instead of side-stepping it like I did with my previous posts. Here are the formulas to convert an angle.

To convert from Hours-Minutes-Seconds to Decimal Degrees

[inlinecode]=INT(A1)+INT((A1-INT(A1))*100)/60+(((A1*100)-INT(A1*100))*100)/3600[/inlinecode]

To convert from Decimal Degrees to Hours-Minutes-Seconds

[inlinecode]=INT(A3)+(INT((A3-INT(A3))*60))/100+(((A3-INT(A3))*60-INT((A3-INT(A3))*60))*60)/10000[/inlinecode]

Some details about the test parameters:

• I used OpenOffice Calc, but I think it will also work in MS Excel.
• I inputted an angle of 85.3030 (DD.MMSS format)
• Output received to 6 decimals was 85.508333 using the HMS to Decimal Degrees formula.
• Using the resulting Decimal Degrees solution, I converted back to HMS and returned what appears to be the same value for the initial input. The difference between the two resulted in 0 (zero).

If anyone finds a bug, just say so! 😉

Darrell

Darrell,

Thanks for those cell formulas. I appreciate it.

-Steve