Excel Formula Help

petite · Post by **petite** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 5:17 pm

I know very little about computers and excel. Now with that out of the way.
I want to be able to use the longitude and latitude of two sites and get the distance between them. Perhaps I'm complicating this by looking to use excel when there's a mathematical method I can do on paper BUT either way I'd appreciate some help.

andyf · Post by **andyf** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 11:33 pm

I doubt excel will help you in doing so, but if you can write a proper mathematical formula you can get accurate results.
Hope this site will help you : exceltip.com

Grey_Wolf · Post by **Grey_Wolf** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:57 am

Hey Petite,

We've got a program at work that does this for us in an excel format

(finding distance and magnetic track) for flight planning purposes. Only kicker is that you have to plug in the coordinates into a sub-page for it to work. It helps if you know the coords in decimal since the program does it that way.

Anyway let me know, I could send it to you or punch it in here and then send you the info.

Ciao

200hr Wonder · Post by **200hr Wonder** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 5:58 pm

Petite I could do this for you in excel in about 10 to 20min if I knew which formula you where using.

just curious · Post by **just curious** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 7:50 pm

Sure, I can rack my brain for you, or post this link:
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/calculators

just curious · Post by **just curious** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 8:01 pm

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml

just curious · Post by **just curious** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 8:04 pm

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

this one has a formula petite, or you could pm me for a worksheet

just curious · Post by **just curious** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 8:11 pm

Some great circle formulae:
Distance between points
The great circle distance d between two points with coordinates {lat1,lon1} and {lat2,lon2} is given by:

d=acos(sin(lat1)*sin(lat2)+cos(lat1)*cos(lat2)*cos(lon1-lon2))
A mathematically equivalent formula, which is less subject to rounding error for short distances is:

d=2*asin(sqrt((sin((lat1-lat2)/2))^2 +
cos(lat1)*cos(lat2)*(sin((lon1-lon2)/2))^2))