Deriving a Secant and Cosecant

Summary: Two rather common trigonometric functions are secants and cosecants. Excel doesn't provide functions to calculate these, but you can use a formula to derive them, as described here. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

Excel includes many built-in functions that allow you to use a wide range of trigonometric functions. Two that are not included, however, are functions for determining a secant and a cosecant. Let's assume that an angle value, in radians, is stored in cell B7. If you need to know the secant of the angle, you can use the following formula:

=1/COS(B7)

Likewise, if you need to know the cosecant of the angle, the following formula will do the trick:

=1/SIN(B7)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2455) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Deriving a Secant and Cosecant