How many of you, working with international clients, or international companies have received data in Excel that needed to be converted to U.S. standards?
The CONVERT function converts data from one set of units to another. For example, the CONVERT function can change feet to meters, hours to minutes, or degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheit.
The CONVERT function works only if the Analysis ToolPak is loaded. To load the Add-In for Excel 2003, click Tools | Add-Ins. Then check Analysis ToolPak and click OK.
In Excel 2007, click the Office Button and click Excel Options at the bottom. Then click Add-Ins, select Excel Add-Ins in the Manage box and click Go. Select Analysis ToolPak and click OK.
Once the ToolPak is installed, you can put the Convert function to use.
The syntax is =CONVERT ( Number, From_Unit, To_Unit ).
As an example, to change from degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius, the formula may look something like this
=CONVERT(89, “F”, “C”)
Excel will convert 89 degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius (which is 32 degrees, in case you’re wondering).
Because the list of measurements for CONVERT is vast, check out this link from Microsoft for a full list.
Until the next Excel-lent tip, happy computing!
