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)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365

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. ...

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