Using the CONVERT function for different numbering systems

- [Instructor] If you frequently work with data from different countries, you may need to make some conversions. For example, from kilometers to miles or celsius to Fahrenheit. And sometimes you're going the opposite direction. In columns G and H is a limited set of some of the possibilities that we might be talking about if we're trying to convert numbers between different measuring systems. Let's take a couple of simple examples. 180 kilometers, how many miles is this? In cell B2 we use this function called convert. Convert 180, it's in cell A2 comma, and then a huge list pops up, 102 choices believe it or not.

Some of the more popular choices are there at first, and for certain applications you'll quickly discover which ones you're gonna use more often. We wanna convert from kilometers. Now here's meter, we don't see kilometers, but we could just double click and pop this into place and put a K in front of it. We wanna convert from kilometers. Notice how that's within double quotes. Case sensitivity is critical when we use this function. Comma, now based on what we've seen you could make a guess or we can see here already it's lowercase, within double quotes, MI.

We could double click this, pop it into place, or type it. So I'm gonna double click the MI right here. Kilometers to miles, 180 kilometers is, as I press enter, 111.8 miles. Over here we'll go from celsius to Fahrenheit, if you look over in cells H2 and three you'll see there we use uppercase. So same general idea. I can actually copy this formula from here, if I use the right mouse button, drag and add this over to here, but go to the right mouse button. Copy here, and of course make the adjustment.

Instead of km right here, we're converting from celsius, that's capital C, to Fahrenheit, instead of mi, capital F. So, 37 degrees celsius is 98.6 Fahrenheit, body temperature. So you quickly get the idea as to how we might be converting here. Meters to feet, feet to meters. Square miles, the United States is 3.8 million square miles, how many square kilometers is this? Here it's gonna be a little bit different, convert from the data in cell B7 comma L.

We're not likely to find square miles in here, and there are a lot of entries. Or will we? If we have time to look through 102 of these, well maybe we do find it in there. Is it toward the bottom? How 'bout square nautical miles or square statute miles better. MI, caret, two, I'll double quote, pop that into place. By the way, you don't necessarily need to have a caret in there, but maybe it accentuates the idea that it's square and that's a symbol we use in Excel formulas for squaring. So that will work.

Square miles, comma, and you can probably make a good guess here, let's put in kilometers, "km", but like with miles, how 'bout caret two, double quote. So from square miles to square kilometers, enter, that's what it is. 9.841 million square kilometers is the same as 3.8 million square miles. Off to the right, over in columns J and K, we got some prefixes.

You've probably seen these at different times. We can use these letters to precede some of the other measures that we're using. So already we've seen, instead of meters we were using kilometers, so we used a lowercase k in front of lowercase m. So down here, in cell H17 where you see M for meters, we put a single k in front of that, lowercase k, that turns it into kilometers. And there's the prefix right over here. And going the opposite direction at different times, if you were working with milligrams or micrograms, you'd be using an M or a U here as prefix here in front of the G.

We see G over here meaning gram. So at different times we'll be using these. And again, that case sensitivity is critical here. Notice here, here's a capital M, and that means 10 to the sixth, or one million, mega. Down here's an m, that's 10 to the minus third, meaning milli, or on thousandth. And be alert, there's a p here and a uppercase P up there, and a y way at bottom, and a capital Y up top, so be careful if you're using some of these prefixes.

So there's a tremendous amount of capability here when you're converting between numbering systems. If you're trying to track down this function later, if you perhaps forgot its name, looking for it you'll find it on the formulas tab, but not under Math and Trig, but in more functions, not under statistical, but under engineering. There it is, the convert function. A powerful tool for converting between different measuring systems.