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How to convert units of measurement

Posted on mayo 16, 2023 by Excel Pedro Wave

In Excel there is a very useful function, little known and less used:

CONVERT function - Microsoft Support

With the CONVERT function you can convert some units into other units of the same measure, which is very useful for physicists, chemists, mathematicians, engineers, science students or any Excel user who needs to convert units of measurement.

For example, to convert 1 statute mile to kilometers, the following formula is used:

=CONVERT(1,"mi","km")

Where the first argument is the numeric value to convert, a 1 in the example, the second argument is the abbreviation for miles "mi" and the third argument is the abbreviation for kilometers "km".

Since you have to know the abbreviations for the units of measurement to edit the arguments, I prefer to do it with an Excel workbook that I have prepared to automatically convert some units of measurement into others.



In this measurement converter there are 3 data segmentations:

  1. Measurements: to select a measurement type: Area, Distance, Energy, Force, Information, Magnetism, Power, Pressure, Speed, Temperature, Time, Volume (or liquid measure), Weight and mass.
  2. Prefix: to select the prefix of the measurement unit, for example: kilo, which is the multiple of a thousand. The equal sign (=) indicates that there is no prefix, so the unit is worth.
  3. Units: to select the type of unit depending on the type of measurement.

A numerical value is entered in cell K2 and a table in the range K4:L28 is obtained with the conversion of all the units of the selected measure.

To obtain a certain unit of measurement, its prefix is entered in cell M3, and its type of unit in cell N3, with which the conversion is obtained in L2.

In the range M4:M28, the converted units are obtained with the cell prefix M3.

The abbreviations for each conversion are listed in the range N4:N28, separated by hyphens if there is more than one abbreviation, for conversion of units of measure.

In some of the sheets with tables of units I have edited column D with the abbreviations that do work when converting... I may have left some without adding.

Please tell me if you find any errors in the conversions, so I can correct them as soon as possible...


Convert units of measurement in the cloud

Try converting measurements without the need for Excel and without leaving this page.

When you change the type of measurement you must click on the first of the 4 buttons at the bottom right to: Update all data connections

To adjust the zoom of the embedded book:

  • On the mobile or cell phone, use two fingers on the screen, as you do to enlarge or reduce a photo.
  • On the PC, place the cursor inside the browser and press the <Control> key while turning the mouse wheel.


Download the measurement converter

Download version 1.0 from one of these links:

This file is compatible with Excel 2016 and higher versions, since it uses:

Dynamic array formulas and spilled array behavior - Microsoft Support

Open the file and press the button: Enable editing when the PROTECTED VIEW notice appears.

Press the button: Enable content when the SECURITY WARNING appears.

The sheets are protected without a password, so you can study and analyze the formulas. You can even modify this workbook as long as you respect this license:

 

Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)


In the downloaded file you can also analyze the queries in Power Query, with which I have downloaded the measurement unit tables from this web page:

CONVERT function - Microsoft Support


Video-tutorial on how to convert measurements

In this video-tutorial I explain how to convert units of measurement in Spanish.

Select the captions in your language to understand the video-tutorial.

What other conversions between units of measurement would you add?

Tell me and I'll include it in a future version.

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