Imputting an angle degree. Degree, minute, second

[Graham]

Hey,
I am recording degrees in a land survey and wish to use excel to quickly
calculate the angles for me.
I am stuck as to how to imput an angle, not in decimal format, but in
degrees, minutes and seconds so I can then subtract one from the other.
From this I hope to work out how to calculate the mean of angles and the cos
and sine of the angles so you see I'm falling at the first hurdle.
Please help, I have a huge project starting and I hope this can save me time.

Regards

Graham

 

[James Silverton]

Hello, Graham!
You wrote on Fri, 13 Oct 2006 11:12:01 -0700:


I am recording degrees in a land survey and wish to use excel to
quickly
calculate the angles for me.
I am stuck as to how to imput an angle, not in decimal format,
but in
degrees, minutes and seconds so I can then subtract one from the
other.
From this I hope to work out how to calculate the mean of angles
and the cos
and sine of the angles so you see I'm falling at the first
hurdle.
Please help, I have a huge project starting and I hope this can
save me time.


G> Graham


This is not meant sarcastically but do people still use minutes
and seconds for angles? If you need functions to handle them,
try a Google search for degrees minutes second excel. Two of the
earliest responses are from Microsoft and look promising.


James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not

 

[Toppers]

See

http://www.cpearson.com/Excel/latlong.htm

 

[Dave F]

For angles over a large distance, such as in land surveys, or navigation,
then yes, minutes and seconds are used.

 

[paul]

its much easier if you keep the degrees minutes and seconds in seperate cells

 

[David Biddulph]

I wouldn't agree, Paul. If the OP wants to do calculations, it's much
easier to let Excel do the subtractions in DMS, and then the conversion to
radians when he needs the trig functions.

 

[Nick X]

113deg 14min 48.8333sec
In the world of Land Surveying precision and accuracy is everything. The
angle above is taken from an average of 3 set of angles obbserve from one
point in a direct and reverse set up. The original angles were read to the
nearest second on a 3 second gun and then averaged to 4 decimal seconds.
That's like asking if the Pope is still Catholic!?! In this age of
technology things are getting more precise, not less.

In response to question: Break it out into three columns DEGREES, MINUTES,
SECONDS. Enter your angles accordingly. Sum your columns. On the next row
down from your sums (for this example my sums are on row 23 starting in
column B) B24: =B23 (degrees) C24: =C23/60 D24: =D23/3600. On the next row:
B25: =SUM(B2424) this gives you decimal degrees. From there it is easier
to calculate using built Excel functions.