Convert yards to miles

The yard is the unit the United States and the United Kingdom use for shorter lengths. Markings on a field, a length of fabric off the bolt, the distance to the pin on a golf course — all of these are given in yards. The mile covers the longer distances, the ones counted in thousands of yards.

A yard, written yd, is exactly 0.9144 metres[1]. It divides into three feet or thirty-six inches.

A mile, written mi, is exactly 1,609.344 metres and holds 1,760 yards[2]. Every sum on this page uses that second figure.

Both values were settled on one day. On 1 July 1959 the common yard of the English-speaking countries took effect at 0.9144 metres[3], and the mile took its present length as a multiple of it.

A thousand yards is 0.568182 miles. Five hundred yards gives 0.284091 miles, and two thousand yards gives 1.136364 miles.

Each of those answers comes from one operation: you divide the number of yards by 1,760. A hundred yards gives 0.056818 miles, and six hundred yards gives 0.340909 miles.

The answers are long here, because dividing by 1,760 gives a short result only for a whole number of miles or a simple fraction of one, such as 440 or 880 yards. That is why the converter gives a second form of the same value under the result field: whole miles and the remainder in yards. Two thousand yards is written there as 1 mi 240 yd.

A few values come out round. Eight hundred and eighty yards is exactly half a mile, and four hundred and forty yards is a quarter of a mile. The number 1,760 closes that series, because one thousand seven hundred and sixty yards is exactly one mile.

Divide the number of yards by 1,760 and you have the result in miles. Three thousand five hundred and twenty yards comes to exactly two miles.

Formula: miles = yards ÷ 1,760

Going the other way, the same divisor becomes a multiplier. Two miles are 3,520 yards, and the miles to yards converter does that sum for you.

The divisor 1,760 is fixed in law. Schedule 1 of the Weights and Measures Act 1985 gives the mile as 1,760 yards and the yard as 0.9144 metres[4], so both figures used on this page come from the same document.

If your yard count comes from a fabric description or a land measurement, the yards to meters converter is the more useful one. Shorter lengths are handled by the yards to feet converter, and a driving distance by the miles to km converter.

British road signs describe distances in miles and yards only[8]. Shorter distances are given in yards and longer ones in miles[1].

A sign reading 200 yards describes 0.113636 miles, and a sign reading 800 yards describes 0.454545 miles. In yards these distances are whole numbers, and in miles they become decimals.

One part of the system works differently from the wording on the plate. The traffic signs manual generally places temporary roadworks signs by measuring the distance in metres, within an allowed 10% tolerance[8]. A sign reading 200 yards describes 182.88 metres, yet it usually stands 200 metres before the obstruction, which is 218.72 yards.

Put the number of yards in cell A1 and give the formula =A1/1760 in the cell beside it. Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc all compute it the same way, and copying that cell downwards converts the whole column.

The built-in unit function gives the same answer: =CONVERT(A1,"yd","mi"). The function is called CONVERT and its three arguments are number, from_unit and to_unit[9].

The two-part form takes two separate formulas. Whole miles come from rounding down: =FLOOR(A1/1760,1). The remainder in yards comes from the modulus: =MOD(A1,1760). For 2,000 yards the first returns 1 and the second returns 240, which is exactly one mile and 240 yards.