Shooting Range: MOA To Inches At Any Distance

Excel Formulas › Shooting & Archery Range

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Scope turrets and group sizes are quoted in minutes of angle, and an angle only becomes a distance when you know how far away the target is. One MOA is 1.047 inches at 100 yards, and it scales with distance: half as much at 50, three times as much at 300. The formula is a single product, and the range officer's sight-in card writes itself.

Quick formula: MOA times the inches-per-MOA-at-100 constant, scaled by distance:

=B2*1.047*C2/100

A 2.5 MOA adjustment at 300 yards moves the point of impact 2.5 × 1.047 × 3 = 7.853 inches.

Functions used (tap for the full reference guide):

PRODUCT ROUND

The example

Three ranges on the same card. The 50-yard line is where the "an MOA is an inch" shortcut starts to mislead new shooters.

	A	B	C	D
1	Adjustment	MOA	Yards	Inches
2	Zero check	1	100	1.047
3	Long-range dial	2.5	300	7.853
4	Rimfire, 50 yd	0.5	50	0.262

The formula

Three factors, one line:

=ROUND(B2*1.047*C2/100,3) // MOA to inches at the stated distance

How it works

Angle, constant, distance:

B2 is the angle in minutes. A quarter-MOA turret is 0.25 per click, so 10 clicks is 2.5 MOA.
*1.047 converts one MOA to inches at exactly 100 yards. It comes from the tangent of one sixtieth of a degree times 3,600 inches.
*C2/100 scales for distance. At 300 yards the same angle covers three times the inches.
ROUND(...,3) keeps the display sensible. Nobody adjusts to a ten-thousandth of an inch.

Run it backwards to build a click card: inches you need to move, divided by inches per click at that distance, rounded to the nearest whole click (see the variation).

Try it: interactive demo

Interactive

Enter the MOA and the distance in yards.

MOA

Distance (yards)

Variations

Clicks needed to move a group

Inches off, divided by inches per click at that distance, rounded to a whole click. Click value is usually 0.25 MOA.

=ROUND(InchesOff/(ClickMOA*1.047*C2/100),0)

Group size in MOA

The reverse: inches divided by 1.047 divided by yards over 100. A 1.5-inch group at 200 yards is 0.72 MOA.

=Inches/(1.047*C2/100)

Pitfalls & errors

Shooter's MOA (1 inch at 100 yards) and true MOA (1.047) are both in use. Some turrets are marked IPHY, inches per hundred yards. Check which yours is; at 600 yards the difference is 2.8 inches, which is a miss.

For milliradian turrets the constant is different: 1 mil is 3.6 inches at 100 yards, so the formula is =Mils*3.6*C2/100. Do not mix the two on one card.

Do not use meters in the yards cell. 1.047 inches per MOA is at 100 yards; at 100 meters it is 1.145. Convert the distance or change the constant, but not both.

Practice workbook

📊

Download the free Shooting Range: MOA To Inches At Any Distance practice workbook

Edit the yellow MOA and yards cells; inches on target recalculates.

Frequently asked questions

Why 1.047 and not 1?

One minute of angle is one sixtieth of a degree. The tangent of that angle times 3,600 inches (100 yards) is 1.0472 inches. Calling it 1 is fine at 100 yards and off by nearly 5 percent at any distance, which matters once the range gets long.

Does this apply to archery sights?

The geometry is identical, but archery sights are usually adjusted in fractions of an inch of sight travel rather than MOA, so the useful number is the ratio of sight movement to impact movement at a given distance. Build a separate card for it.

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Function references: PRODUCT ROUND