Decimal Feet to Feet and Inches by and for Dummies

Spreadsheet example

Spend much time at all on the internet and you should figure out within minutes that at least 90% of the people sharing "facts" or "truth" do not, in reality, have the foggiest notion what they're talking about. That makes getting at a kernel of truth in the middle of any statement a little dicey at times, especially when you learn that the words were dashed off at top speed by someone hoping to make as much money as possible in the shortest time. Oh, sure, sometimes you get lucky and encounter internet "truths" that are well-researched and/or written by someone with a solid grounding in the subject. But on the other hand, there's eHow and its stable of freelancers... freelancers like Carter McBride, who claims to have an MS in accounting (get that: a Master of Science!) plus a JD; neither of which was apparent when he attempted to tell people "How to Convert Decimals to Feet and Inches in Excel"¹ for eHow.com.

Since he was writing for eHow, Carter had to pad his text to reach the DMS minimum word count; which probably accounts for the inconsistency of statements like

"Microsoft Excel does not have any functions that explicitly convert decimals to feet and inches. However, you can use other Excel functions to make the conversion for you. In order to make these connections, you need to remember that there are 12 inches in a foot, so if you have a decimal, you need to convert it to a fraction of 12. For example, if you have 0.5 as your decimal, then as a fraction of 12, you have 6/12, or six inches."

Duh. Of course, we aren't sure which "connections" McBride expects to make... The combination of McBride's semi-competence and the site's insistence on a standardized format force Carter to begin his instructions (including the required "action verb") with

"Open a new worksheet in Microsoft Excel..."

We repeat, "Duh." But when Carter gets to the true meat of the matter, he... let's just say his padding turns into overcompensation:

"In cell C1, type "=(((A1-INT(A1))12)/10)10." This is the formula to convert your amount in feet to inches. In the example, cell C1 will display 10.8 because 0.9 feet equals 10.8 inches." Now first, we have to translate eHow's idiotic typographical conventions for formulas:  in the original version, according to the Wayback Machine, the formula Carter used was (((A1-INT(A1))*12)/10)*10  Either way you type it (using standard symbols or just using typographic stupidity), though it's... well, it's not quite right. You see, Carter wants you to divide the decimal portion of the original number by 10 and then multiply that answer by 10 – a waste of time, since the division and multiplication steps cancel each other out. Oops.

For what it's worth, McBride obviously doesn't know much about Excel, because your answer becomes two numbers. If you really want to convert the decimal 12.8 feet to feet and inches in an Excel spreadsheet, all you have to do is:

1. Type 12.8 in cell A1
2. Type =INT(A1) in cell B1
3. Type =(A1-INT(A1))/12 in cell C1
4. Type =CONCATENATE(B1," feet, ",C1, " inches") in cell D1

to get the answer "12 feet, 9 inches." And that's how you convert decimal feet to feet and inches in Excel – something McBride didn't actually research beyond looking up a table of decimal equivalents of inches. Maybe if he'd looked up some elementary mathematics or simple Excel operations... but he didn't, which is why the Dumbass of the Day award goes out to Carter.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_8343535_convert-decimals-feet-inches-excel.html

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