Try:

=INT(F12/12)&"'"&"-"&MOD(F12,12)&""""

Will do... thanks, Dik

that works but it gives you a decimal for the inches.   Go one step further to get the fractions:  

format the cell for the inches using the fractions type under format/cells/number/catetory/fractions.

It is a little inelegant in that when you choose eighths you get 2/8 and not 1/4, but it is something.  


regards,


chichuck

If you choose "allow two digits" you'll get 1/12, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and combinations thereof. However, this still isn't feet and inches, it's feet and fractions of feet.  On the up side, however, the field remains formatted as a number.

So, is there a way to convert that inches in feet-inches to fraction?

it's easy if you want everything in 32ths (or any other fraction), but more complicated if you want to do halves, 4ths, 8ths, 16ths, depending on the decimal.  

=INT(F12/12)&"'"&" - "&INT(MOD(F12,12))&" "&ROUND((F12-(INT(F12/12)*12)-INT(MOD(F12,12)))*32,0)&"/32 """

ivymike, I have tried using your equation and doubt that the solution comes out right.

I wonder if anybody know the way to convert the fractions to 16ths? If possible, it would automatically convert the 16ths to simplest fractions as well. For instance, 8/16 to 1/2. Any genius outthere?

Excel has a built-in "fractions" number type.  If you pick the "up to two digits" type (and don't force 8ths, 16ths, etc.) then Excel will magically conver to the simplest fraction. (E.g. 98/12 = 8 1/6.)

Converting 98 inches to 8'2" however is achievable in a few steps, but the output will be a text field, not a number field. You can create a column with just the inches component by using the formula: =MOD(A1,12).  Assuming 98 inches is in cell A1, that formula will return a value of 2. Extracting the feet involves the INT formula: =INT(A1/12).  You now have one column with the feet, another with the inches.  

If you're not picky, and you're just looking for presentation, then you can use custom formatting to make them look correct. Format Cell --> Custom --> type in the box [0"ft"] or if you want the space first, [0" ft"]. Similarly for the inches.  You can use the ' and '' (use two single quotes) marks if you like, and you can also put a - before the inches ["- "0" in"].  Just put whatever text you want in quotes, and remember double quotes inside double quotes will not work.

If you want the ft and in in one field, then you have to give up the number quality. (But you can preserve the decimal number in a hidden field for calculation purposes.)
Clyde's solution above should work.

Wouldn't it be easier if you Americans just started using the metric system like the rest of us!

We Canadians use metric and imperial interchangeably... about 99% of our firm's work is imperial... It's the cost of conversion that has kept the Americans using imperial... The luxury of metric is pricey... IMHO

Dik

Here is a user defined function which returns an imperial fraction from any decimal number. I do not know if it formats as text but I do know that it can be referred to as a number in a formula. If the imperial fraction is in cell A1 and I put the formula "=A1*1" in cell B1 then I get the decimal equivalent of the imperial fraction, not the original decimal value.

A modification should allow any value over 12 to display feet as well as inches.

Fglass
So, is there a way to convert that inches in feet-inches to fraction?

I interpreted the above to mean "is there a way to convert inches to feet-inches where the inches are expressed as a fraction."  Here are some inputs and outputs:

96    8' - 0 0/32 "
96.25    8' - 0 8/32 "
50    4' - 2 0/32 "
50.125    4' - 2 4/32 "
112    9' - 4 0/32 "
112.125    9' - 4 4/32 "
115.35    9' - 7 11/32 "

Perhaps if you express the problem clearly you will get more helpful responses.

 

using francesca's suggestion:
96    8' - 0"
96.25    8' - 1/4"
50    4' - 2"
50.125    4' - 2 1/8"
112    9' - 4"
112.125    9' - 4 1/8"
115.35    9' - 7 7/20"

=INT(F12/12)&"'"&" - "&TEXT(MOD(F12,12),"# #/##")&""""

Here's my inches to feet-inch-fractions formula. It provides 1/16 fractions, but will show 1/8 1/4 1/2 if they are closest. For example 90.375 = 7'-6 3/8"

A little refinement to take care of negative values:

yakpol-
Using the code you've provided, I typed 22.02 into cell A1.  This gives the following result:  1'-10 0/1 "

Why does it not give 1'-10 0/16" or just 1'-10" ?

You'd need to check if the 1/16th fraction is giving a 0 - the formula now checks to see if there is a fraction at all.
I also changed the SIGN part, to show 0'-0" if there is a value of 0 entered, instead of - 0'-0".

Cheers,
Joerd

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

joerd,
Thanks for fixing the formula, it seems to be bulletproof now. Great result of combined efforts. Thank you dik for bringing up interesting problem!

yakpol

Be aware lest any unintended consequences occur -> the formula suggested by joerd returns 0'-0 7/16" when .499 is entered in A1.

probably a consequence of using INT() instead of ROUND(), but I haven't taken the time to mess with it.

Try

I hope it's the last iteration:

should work for any number now!

Isn't it great to see how "bulletproofing" a formula makes it twice as long? Yakpol's first formula deserves a star for simplicity, and his last a star for comprehensiveness (and getting close to being unintelligible)

Cheers,
Joerd

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

Takes awhile to get correct formula... previosly posted long version still was not bulletproof giving 1'-12" answer if 23 31/32 is in cell A1. No more relying on built-in excel formulas shortest answer is:

These are great formulas!  SUper work and great thread!

Can you make one that does not break out the feet, but would yield 25 15/16" for instance?

That would be , if yakpol agrees.

Cheers,
Joerd

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

Just formatting cell as a fraction would do, however you might get 2/16" instead of 1/8"... Joerd's formula would do as well without

One more question for this topic........

If you use 72.25 as the number you're converting the result is 6'-1/4".

How would the formula be modified in order to have the result read 6'-0 1/4" ?

Just a little modification changing '#' for '0' will do

You can also use Mathcad.  It will convert your units automatically.  

 
 

 

 

Hi folks-
I am a very novice Excel user. I have a project that requires input of values in 0'-0" format.  I understand from your thread that you are converting various decimal and fractional values to architectural units... my goal is to enter architectural units, and have them respond to various formulas for quantities / lengths / volumes, etc.  I know there are various Architectural Calculators that perform this quite easily, but can it be done in Excel?  Many thanks in advance!
JP.

Here's an example of what I need.
One small part of what I'm doing is a parametric extraction of lumber required to build a flight of stairs. I have the whole thing worked out, except that I have to FIRST convert my units to decimal values, and then enter those. I can see that your formula's posted will turn them back into arch units, but if I could just enter my floor-to-floor value (8'-10 1/8") instead first converting, (106.625 inches) and then converting back, that would really rock!

jpbernier,
The formula you require gets really nusty, but it shall work if you keep very strong format of input data (like 3'-0 1/2" ) . I still don't promise complete bulletproofness of it

yakpol

Yakpol-
I appreciate your super-quick response!  I've tried applying your formula, but I can't get it to do anything but generate #ref! and #value! errors.  Maybe just a little tip on where to put it / how to apply it?
Sorry to sound so dumb, I know I totally suck at this.

It would be simpler to enter feet in one cell and inches in another.  Then put a formula in a third cell that multiplies the feet cell by 12 and adds it to the inches cell.

I wonder why. Place the text you want to convert in cell A1 and formula in cell B1.

Yakpol, I appreciate your fine efforts, but I'm afraid that was much too complicated for my little primitive brain.  However, jghrist... that was the simple solution I was looking for!!  After doing little formatting to get the x' and x" I was on my way!  Thank you so much for everyone's help!!
JP.

Here is a free, ready-made Excel add-in that will let you do calculations in feet and inches...

http://josh.com/InchCalc/index.htm

-josh

BigJosh - (1) it seems to choke on 144.1 - can you check it out?  (2) it does not seem to work with OpenOffice - is this a know issue?

RE #1 - InchCalc chokes on i2s(144.1):

This is an inherent problem in Excel. Try typing the following formula into Excel (any Excel spreadsheet, InchCalc *NOT* required);

=1*(.5-.4-.1)

You might be very surprised to see that the answer is NOT zero.

I could make InchCalc hide this problem from you by rounding in the incoming inches to, say, 10 decimal places but I generally prefer to have things fail quickly and explicitly rather trying to hide the problem only to have it show up unexpectedly in a seemingly unrelated cell.

You can read the Microsoft Knowledgebase article here;

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/214118

Ultimately the solution is to not use decimals unless they are an even power of two in the denominator (0.125 is ok, 0.100 is not). This is not too much of a problem for InchCalc since most people by convention specify inches in fractions (1-3/4" rather than 1.74"). This is, however, a huge problem in many other non-InchCalc spreadsheets (pretty much all financial spreadsheets that do math on currencies have these errors hiding in them- often leading to WRONG answers).

Maybe someday Excel will permanently solve this problem by adding a Binary Coded Decimal data type. Most modern computer programming languages have this (in Java it is called BigDecimal). It is slow, but you never get decimal error creep.

RE #2 - OpenOffice support:

While it certainly would be possible to make a version of InchCalc that works with OpenOffice, I've found that most professionals use Excel. Additionally, OpenOffice's documentation for creating add-ins is not great, so it would be more difficult that it should be. That said, if there were enough people who really wanted it, I be happy to put in the effort.

I cannot remember who developed this formula initially. Some changes were made by me, but I cannot explain how it works. The formula is used in a spreadsheet to calculate summations. Separate rows and columns contain dimensions in (+ or -) metric, feet, inches, fractions. These are summed and converted to decimal feet, then expressed as ft-in-fraction (10.106 converts to 10' - 2 1/16"). The user can also do other math operations on the decimal values in cells.

=IF(TRUNC(ft)=0,IF(SIGN(ft)=1,"","-"),TRUNC(ft)&"' ")&TEXT(MOD(IF(SIGN(ft)=1,1,-1)*ft,1)*12,IF(TRUNC(ft)=0,"0 ","- 0 ")&IF(ABS(MOD(ft,1)*12-ROUND(MOD(ft,1)*12,0))>1/32,"  0/"&CHOOSE(ROUND(MOD(MOD(ft,1)*12,1)*16,0),16,8,16,4,16,8,16,2,16,8,16,4,16,8,16),""))&""""

Ben

Hi Ben:

Couple of things ...
using following formula in your post ...

=IF(TRUNC(ft)=0,IF(SIGN(ft)=1,"","-"),TRUNC(ft)&"' ")&TEXT(MOD(IF(SIGN(ft)=1,1,-1)*ft,1)*12,IF(TRUNC(ft)=0,"0 ","- 0 ")&IF(ABS(MOD(ft,1)*12-ROUND(MOD(ft,1)*12,0))>1/32,"  0/"&CHOOSE(ROUND(MOD(MOD(ft,1)*12,1)*16,0),16,8,16,4,16,8,16,2,16,8,16,4,16,8,16),""))&""""

that converts 10.106 to 10' - 1   1/4" (10'-2 1/16" in your post is most likely a typo)

Anyway, following is my shorter formula ...

=INT(B2)&"'-"&TRIM(TEXT(ROUND(MOD(B2,1)*12*16,0)/16,"# ??/??")&"""")

that converts 10.106 to 10'-1 1/4 "

Yogi Anand, D.Eng, P.E.
Energy Efficient Building Network LLC
ANAND Enterprises LLC
http://www.energyefficientbuild.com

this is a really novice question.  I have cut and pasted the formulas that have been suggested above for converting decimal numbers to feet and inches (and fractions thereof) .... but how do you get actual numbers into the given cell where the long "=IF(......)" formulas are at?  I have tried, putting formulas in front of the "IF(...."  statements and just keep getting errors messages with the cell's formula.  

So I guess my questiosn is how I get the numbers I want to mainipulate into the same cell's as the preceding formulas that then convert those numbers to feet and inches??

Number in one cell, formula with the result in a different cell.

I am missing something very very basic here .... so apologize.

as a simple example, say I put the number 1.25 in once cell ... then 2.50 in another cell ... a third cell adds the two .... EXCEL would report the result as 3.75 .... if, however I wanted it to read 3'-9" via the nice and handy formulas created above, how would I do that?

In other words, the cell (lets call "C1") that sums two numbers would have something like "=A1+B1" .... so how would I input (somehow) the handy formuala that converts to feet and inches (the "=(IF ....)" in the same cell that also has "=A1+B1"?  

How do I combine the summing equation portion with the formatting formula that converts to feet and inches??

TIA

In your example, lets say you have this spreadsheet...

     A        B     C
1   1.25    2.50   3.75


...where C1 is actually the formula "=A1+B1".

You could then paste the following formula in cell D1...


=INT(C1)&"'-"&TRIM(TEXT(ROUND(MOD(C1,1)*12*16,0)/16,"# ??/??")&"""")

...and you would see 3' - 9" in D1.

You could change the "c1" in the above formula to refer to any cell that has a number of feet expressed as a decimal. It can even be a relaive cell reference so that you could patse the formula into a whole column of cells and it would display a whole column of numbers in the foot/inch format.

Make sense?

If you use InchCalc, it is slightly more straightforward since you get a new Excel function called i2s() to do the same conversion, so you could just put...

=i2s( =a1+b1)

...in cell C1 and C1 would then display the sum in foot/inch format

-josh

Quote (bigjosh):

=INT(C1)&"'-"&TRIM(TEXT(ROUND(MOD(C1,1)*12*16,0)/16,"# ??/??")&"""")

Assuming that formula works (I haven't checked) you could put it in cell C1 and change all references to "C1" in the formula and change them to "A1+B1".  But in any case, the formula and the number(s) to convert are in different cells.

Hi ranmoo:

If you have entries 1.25 in cell A1, and 2.5 in cell B1, then you can also use ...
or, use
and both do work to give the correct result of 3'-9"

Yogi Anand, D.Eng, P.E.
Energy Efficient Building Network LLC
ANAND Enterprises LLC
http://www.energyefficientbuild.com

Hello everyone,

I would like to add a question to the mix ... How about keeping the inch and displaying the fraction? 6.375" shown as 6 3/8"

Thanks for posting, this site is a great help.

With InchCalc, the following formula...

=i2s( 6.375 )

...will show 6' - 3/8" in the cell. You can also use the optional formating parameter to chaneg the output. Forf example...

=i2s( 6.375 , 1 )

...will show 6' 3/8" (no dash). There are many other formats available.

You can download the free InchCalc package here...

http://josh.com/inchcalc/

-josh

Josh,

     I loaded the InchCalc and it works great for single digit inch enrties, but it converts any number larger than 12.00" to  feet. 16.25" becomes 1'-4 1/4" and not 16 1/4". Are there additional ways to modify the output than just the end display?
     I've tried various modifications of some of the formulas earlier in this thread, but with no success.

I just published an updated version of InchCalc that now includes a second optional parameter to the i2s(( function that will supress the conversion to feet.

For example...

=i2s( 144.0625 , 3 , 1 )

...will display...

144 1/16"

You can download the new version from...

http://josh.com/inchcalc

Give it a try and let me know if this is what you need.

-josh

Josh,
  
     It works fine in the demo, but when I load the new .xla file and try to use it, "Compile error: Variable not defined" pops up and the VBA window opens with this displayed ... "f = Int(a / 12)" but with the "f =" highlighted in blue.
     Where might my error be?

Taylor

Sorry, I think I messed up the upload. Please try downloading again and let me know if it still is not correct.

-josh

Josh, Yes indeed! Whatever you did corrected the error. This is a very nice tool to have, thanks for all your help.

Taylor

TG I'm in Spain!

BigInch-born in the trenches.
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.msn.com

Yeah, but in Spain, how interesting do conversions get?  Could you generate 56 responses to a problem of converting meters to millimeters?

I give you that one.  happily.  

'pose I should change my name now, too.

BigInch-born in the trenches.
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.msn.com

hello,

I'm trying to use InchCalc and getting results like this:

12    1' - 0"
12.1    1' - 9.99999999999996E-02"
12.2    1' - .199999999999999"
12.3    1' - .300000000000001"
12.4    1' - .4"
12.5    1' - 0 1/2"
12.6    1' - .6"
12.7    1' - .699999999999999"
12.8    1' - .800000000000001"
12.9    1' - .9"
13    1' - 1"
13.1    1' - 1.1"
13.2    1' - 1.2"
13.3    1' - 1.3"
13.4    1' - 1.4"
13.5    1' - 1 1/2"
13.6    1' - 1.6"
13.7    1' - 1.7"
13.8    1' - 1.8"
13.9    1' - 1.9"
14    1' - 2"
14.1    1' - 2.1"
14.2    1' - 2.2"
14.3    1' - 2.3"
14.4    1' - 2.4"
14.5    1' - 2 1/2"
14.6    1' - 2.6"
14.7    1' - 2.7"
14.8    1' - 2.8"

Can anyone help? I am using the formula =i2s(A1) and thought I would get #' - #"  #/# and not fractions of an inch.

Cheers

tutrleshead,

I'm not sure what you mean by "not getting fractions of an inch". Can you give some examples of =i2s() output and what you would want the output to look like?

-josh

They want the inches to be 1 1/4" rather than 1.25" (or 1.3" as the output above shows).  Or 1 13/32" rather than 1.4".

Hg

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The result for =i2s(1.25) is 1 1/4".

The example above used an input of 12.20 as opposed to 12.25. I think the correct output for 1.20 is 1' - .20" as shown.

In practice, non-fractional decimals (like 0.20) should not come up in measurements since most people use multipules of 1.32nds or 1/64ths.

It's a free add-in, so you get what you paid for.  It only converts for denominators that are EXACTLY powers of 2, even down to 1/256, so even 0.9999999/256 results in a decimal, rather than 1/256

TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

Free or not, I think it is pretty good, but then again, I wrote it. :)

I've put a lot of thought into what the correct result should be when converting non-fractional measuraments like "0.9999999/256" and I think returning an ugly but correct answer is preferable to giving a neat-looking, but incorrect answer.

If all you really want is an aproximation anyway, you could always fix-up the "0.999999999" first by running it though a round() or int(). At least this way you are explicit stating that you want an aproximation rather than an exact answer.

But believe me, if you can think of a better and more consistant way to handle this issue, I am all ears!

Thanks,
josh

I understand of course it's a free plugin I was just trying to understand how it works and now I do.

I am an architect (originally from australia now in the US) and until now have worked exclusively in mm.

The software package we use (Catia) spits out data to spreadsheets in inches however the contractor wants the information in feet, inches and fractions of inches so now I understand what it is the InchCalc addin is doing I can apply a rounding factor to my data to ensure it is in the right format.

Obviously building tolerances are very different to those in the aerospace industry.

cheers everyone