Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Deriving a Secant and Cosecant.

Deriving a Secant and Cosecant

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 2, 2025)

Excel includes many built-in functions that allow you to use a wide range of trigonometric functions. If you need to determine either the secant or cosecant of an angle, you can use the SEC and CSC functions:

=SEC(A1)
=CSC(A1)

The value in A1 must be the angle expressed in radians.

Both the SEC and CSC functions were introduced in Excel 2013. If you are using an older version of Excel you can use a simple formula to derive the values. Let's assume that an angle value, in radians, is stored in cell B7. To derive 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 (10084) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Deriving a Secant and Cosecant.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Making Hyperlinks from Coded Text

Sometimes you may receive documents from others that you need to process in some way. Word's Find and Replace ...

Discover More

Counting Cells with Specific Characters

Excel is used by many people to hold all sorts of data, not just numbers. If you have cells that include meaningful ...

Discover More

Referencing a Page Number In Another Document

Page references are a common element of many documents. If you need to have a page reference to a page in a different ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Cell and Name References in COUNTIF

The second parameter of the COUNTIF function is used to specify the criteria to be used when determining what should be ...

Discover More

Randomly Assigning Names to Items

If you need to randomly match up items in two lists, there are a variety of techniques you can use. Here are a couple of ...

Discover More

Listing the Top Five Transactions

If you have a list of transactions and you want to know the top five from that list, there are a variety of formulaic ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is eight more than 9?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.