Deriving Antilogs

Summary: Creating math formulas is a particular strong point of Excel. Not all the functions that you may need are built directly into the program, however. Here's how you can use the existing functions of Excel to derive antilogs, which do not have functions built into the program. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

Excel allows you to use quite a few different trigonometric functions in your worksheets. If you are big into trig, you may wonder why there are no functions that derive antilogs.

An antilog in Excel is technically defined as the inverse of the LOG10 function. The LOG10 function means the logarithm in base 10 of a number. Given that definition, the antilog, or inverse log, of any number is simply 10 raised to that number. For instance, the base-10 log of 4 is 0.60206, and the base-10 antilog of 4 is 10,000 (10 raised to the fourth power). This also means that the base-10 antilog of the base-10 log of 4 is, again, 4. (Raising 10 to the 0.60206 power is 4.)

The following table shows how you would derive the antilogs of the different log functions within Excel.

Base	Number	Log	Antilog (Power)
x	y	=LOG(x,y)	=x^y
e	y	=LN(y)	=e^y
10	y	=LOG10(y)	=10^y

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2171) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Deriving Antilogs