Working In Feet and Inches

Formating imperial fraction with the denominator such as /2, /4, /8, /16, /32, /64... etc. use MROUND combine with TEXT function to solve round-off issue!

Let say for example cell A1 value 45.6 (inches) and

The round-off setting is 1/8:
=ROUNDDOWN(MROUND(A1,1/8)/12,0)&"'-"&TEXT(MOD(MROUND(A1,1/8),12),"0 #/##")&""""
The result = 3'-9 5/8"

The round-off setting is 1/64:
=ROUNDDOWN(MROUND(A1,1/64)/12,0)&"'-"&TEXT(MOD(MROUND(A1,1/64),12),"0 #/##")&""""
The result = 3'-9 19/32"

Note: regarding text format rounding, the denominator number of digit is importance and must equal (or more than) the number digit of rounding,
Ex. 1/2, 1/8 -> #/# ; 1/16, 1/32, 1/64 -> #/## ; 1/128, 1/256/, 1/512--> #/###; 1/4096 -> #/####, etc.

Most of Exel formua for convert to feet-inches that I found use INT() function while its good with positive number, but not with negative number! check out and you will see, the result is off due to "INT() is not symmetrical when rounding".

To solve convert negative number, below is my formula, it rather long but it cover all senarios that I think of:

Formula to convert from decimal inches to imperial fraction round-off 1/64:

=IF(NOT(ISNUMBER(A1)),"n/a",
IF(OR(MROUND(A1,SIGN(A1)*1/64)>=12,MROUND(A1,SIGN(A1)*1/64)<=-12),
ROUNDDOWN(MROUND(A1,SIGN(A1)*1/64)/12,0)&"'-"&TEXT(MOD(MROUND(ABS(A1),1/64),12),"0 #/##")&"""",
TEXT(MROUND(A1,SIGN(A1)*1/64),"# #/##")&""""))


Also, if you want to use with LAMBDA() function:

=LAMBDA(inch,
IF(NOT(ISNUMBER(inch)),"n/a",
IF(OR(MROUND(inch,SIGN(inch)*1/64)>=12,MROUND(inch,SIGN(in)*1/64)<=-12),
ROUNDDOWN(MROUND(inch,SIGN(inch)*1/64)/12,0)&"'-"&TEXT(MOD(MROUND(ABS(inch),1/64),12),"0 #/##")&"""",
TEXT(MROUND(inch,SIGN(inch)*1/64),"# #/##")&""""))
)

Having used the hint here to format a value such as 45.6 in feet and inches, I got to wondering how to show fractional inches as a fraction, rather than a decimal. That is, how to turn 45.6 into 3' 9 3/8"?

This is one rather awkward solution, but it serves to demonstrate:
=TRUNC(O5/12) & "' " & TRUNC(MOD(O5,12)) & " " & TEXT(MOD(O5, 12) - TRUNC(MOD(O5, 12)),"0/7") & """"

Using 45.6 inches to demonstrate, the first TRUNC serves to calculate whole feet (3). The first MOD returns inches modulo 12, 9.6. It was a little disconcerting to see mod return a fraction, but on a moment's reflection, it makes sense. TRUNC turns it into 9. The third trunc gets us 9.6again, the fourth gets rid of the whole 9, leaving 0.6.

Finally the real trick, formatting 0.6 as sevenths with, in effect, text(0.6, "0/7"). I've found nothing documenting the format string "0/7", but deduced it by selecting the inbuilt format for eighths, then looking at the result in the "custom" format. I picked sevenths just to see if generalizing the 0/8 worked, and it did. Using "0/8" would be more reasonable, but wouldn't serve to illustrate the generality.

Thanks again to Microsoft for not documenting the fraction format string. And if they did, where did they hide it? And thanks to R Reagan for opposing adaptation of the far more reasonable SI system, leaving us with this absurd notation because he thought he'd be forced to watch a football game from the 50-meter line.

I searched expecting to find some in-built way to do this. I see there isn't any.

It's nuts that after 40 years, Excel has none. Instead, MS has spent time and money changing File Save to direct us first and most easily to their more profitable cloud storage. Excel is good enough, and complex enough, that it is difficult to build a competitor, and entrenched enough that MS can safely continue to milk it without improving it.

Javascript has evolved immensely in 25 years, and 25 year old JS code will still run in ES6. Has Excel's VBA changed at all in that time?

Nonetheless, thanks for maintaining this site. It's very helpful.

Thanks I found this useful. I modified the formula to work for a study that involved differences between ceiling heights and needed to work for negative values. This was my version: =IF(A1>=0,INT(M4/12)&" ft. "&MOD(A1,12)&" in.",CEILING.MATH(A1/12)&" ft. "&-MOD(ABS(A1),12)&" in.")

Please, feel free to delete this comment.

With all due respect...

The word is "linear"..."not lineal."

They are not interchangeable.

Thank you for the tips.

This works fine until you have a case where inches is 11.98 (or so) and then you only want to display one decimal place.
You are then left with the unconventional x ft 12 in.

Is there a way to set a custom format for cells? If I input a value in inches, that it would show the value in feet'-inches" (like in your example above, input 66 and it show as 5'-6")?

I'd rather not have to input a number in one cell and have another cell have to calculate it. Just be able to input the number in one cell and have it show the way I want it to......

Good work Allen.

I appreciate that the main point of your post is to provide an alternative to an Excel Macro, and agree with the method you give.

I thought I'd just point out that John's User Defined Function works great, but uses Bankers Rounding, so it can give unexpected results when rounding values. I've contacted him so he'll likely revise this in the near future.

In the interim I've made a revised function that avoids this issue which can be downloaded here:
https://engineerstoolkit.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/dealing-with-feet-and-inches-in-excel/

Incidentally there's another similar function that I believe was written by Bill Jellen at the link below, but this also has similar issues with rounding, and doesn't have the same functionality, so just be aware of this:
http://www.mrexcel.com/articles/excel-feet-to-inches.php

Hopefully one day we'll ALL move the the metric system though so that we can do away with this sort of frustration! :)

I want to calculate below in excel suggest me correct formula
nos - 3
length - 10'5""
breath - 7'7"

Area is 23.69508 sqft if calculate manually

In excel format how we could do

Please give correct solution the above email id

Think metric! :-)