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Complex Math for Office

If you were ever wanting to use Complex Math in Microsoft Office, don’t fear, it’s actually supported!

To enable complex math functions, enable the Analysis ToolPak add-in.  To do this, go to:

• For Office 2007: (Big office button, top left), Options, Add-ins, at the bottom press “Go” next to Manage (Add-ins), and check “ANALYSIS TOOLPAK”.
• For earlier versions: Tools, Add-ins, enable “ANALYSIS TOOLPAK”

Great!  Now where’s your function reference?  Turns out you boot up Help, and type “Engineering Functions.”  There will be an item called “Engineering Functions (Reference)” which contains all your new functions.  Most complex functions are prefixed with IM.

For some Excel examples:

• Add two numbers together:
  =IMSUM(”2 + 3i”, “5 + 7i”)
• Divide a real number by the conjugate of something else:
  =IMDIV(5,IMCONJUGATE(A1))
• Subtract a number from a complex number defined by two fields (F1 ~ real component, G1 ~ imaginary component)
  =IMSUB(COMPLEX(F1,G1), “2 - 4i”)

The possibilities are endless!

Have fun!

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Tags: complex, complex math, complex numbers, excel, functions, library, office 2003, office 2007

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