I am completing a time study and recording time in excel. I have numbers like 2.24, etc.. I am trying to add them and average them and I am getting numbers like 9.76 when I really want 10m and 16seconds. Any thoughts to fixing this?
When I change the format to mm:ss it give me wild answers
If 9.76 is a decimal number and it's is in A1, then in B1 you can use:
=((A1-(ROUNDOWN(A1;0)))/0,6+(ROUNDOWN(A1;0)))/24
Also, format of cell with formula must be hours (I've used [hh]:mm:ss)
Applying this, I get:
I've done it in the following way: I used cell formatting, like u:mm:ss (in English locale, this might be h:mm:ss instead).
In one cell, I've put 0:2:24 (zero hours, two minutes, 24 seconds).
In the cell below, I've put 0:7:52.
Adding both cells (inside a cell with the mentioned cell formatting) yielded 0:10:16.
=9.76 value(minutes)
=24*60 number of minutes in a day
=A1/A2 formatted as time
Will show 12:09:46. You can use =MINUTE(A3) to extract the minutes and =SECOND(A3) for the seconds.
Actually if 9.76 means 9 minutes and 76 seconds, you'll need more formulas to extract the minutes and seconds then add them together. You can use =Floor() to get the integer. Subtract to find the .76 and multiply by 100 to get the number of seconds. Then divide by 60 to convert to minutes and add to the 9 whole mins. Now you have the number of mins which you can convert to a time value per the above.
EDIT:
You need to enter in Excel as 0:02:12 then you can add quite nicely. If you don't want to re-enter everything you can do this: =VALUE("0:"&SUBSTITUTE(A1,".",":")) then add. Be sure to convert each individual value BEFORE adding otherwise you might get incorrect results.
I have come across this problem several times, so I would like to ask you now. I often need to create time series with hourly time steps (usually for the length of one year).
So I start to write
01.01.2001 00:00
01.01.2001 01:00
01.01.2001 02:00
Then I drag the the fill handle, so that Excel automatically fills the next lines until 31.12.2001. But, for what reason ever, there is a sudden jump of only 59 minutes instead of a full hour:
05.01.2001 03:00
05.01.2001 03:59
05.01.2001 04:59
Anybody else who came across this? And can me explain the reason and/or recommend alternatives for an automatic creation of the time series?
In the first cell you need to change number format to
dd.mm.rrrr g:mm;#
Then you can write your first date and time. When you drag the fill to the second cell - edit it to get next hour. Then when you select this two cell and drag fill handle you'll get automatically time series +hour
picture
I have values displayed as 29.87, which is 29.87 seconds in from my POV, Sometimes I have minutes entered as 1:09.89, meaning 1 minute, 9 seconds, etc.
My main question is can I work a formula to add something like 29.87 with 40.02 so it displays as 1:09.89 after adding the two numbers from the cells? Currently, it displays as 69.89 when added, and no other display option I have tried have it correctly displayed how I want it to be.
Use this formula : =TEXT((A1+B1)/(24*60*60),"HH:mm.00")
I'm working on an excel 2010 sheet where I mark down the date and time an event happens. The date is in one column, and auto formats to 17-Nov when I would type in 11-17 (I was fine with this). The time is in a separate column.
I am trying to find the average time an event occurred, without regard to the date, so I would use =AVERAGE(C1:C10). However, I only receive a date back (like 17-APR).
I did not format the cells before I began to enter in data, and I would simply type in a 3:27pm event as 1527, and no reformatting would happen.
Now, when I attempt to reformat the column to hhmm, all the numbers entered so far turn to 0000. When I try to edit the 0000, it is formatted as 6/13/1906 12:00:00 AM.
What I want to do is have the time formatted as hhmm and not include a date in the cell, and be able to run formulas on it, such as the average time an even occurred.
Summary:
*Currently time is entered simply as ####. I entered 3:27pm as 1527.
*Trying to reformat the time column results in 0000 in all cells in the column that previously had a ####.
*Modifying the 0000 displays as 6/13/1906 12:00:00 AM
*I want to format the time as hhmm so I can simply type in 2357, and have it display as 2357, but understand I mean 11:57pm, and let me take averages.
*Hell, even being able to enter 1547 and have it auto format to 15:47 or 3:47p would be great.
Thanks for reading my question!
An easy way to apply an autoformat (though Excel won't see it as a true "Time") is to go into Format Cells>Custom> and use ##":"##. This will turn 1245 into 12:45. Mind you, this will be a text string so if you copy it to another cell and then apply a time, it will show as 12:00:00. Excel will also not be able to run formulas on it, but it's a quick and dirty way to make it look pretty.
Another option is to have a formula such as =TIME(LEFT(A1,2),RIGHT(A1,2),) where A1 would be replaced with the cell you are actually referencing. This will convert the number to a time that Excel will recognize as a time allowing you to run other functions on it, but requires another column.
If you are entering the times as 4-digit numbers, you'll need to do a calculation to get the hours and minutes, then use the TIME function to get an actual time:-
=TIME(A1/100,MOD(A1,100),0)
Another way is
=LEFT(A1,2)/24+RIGHT(A1,2)/1440
but then you have to format the result as a time.
Excel sees a number like 1547 as approximately 4 years on from 1st January 1900 if you format it as a date, so it will come out as something like 26/3/1904 in UK format or 3/26/1904 in US-style format.
Note that the time function can only give you values up to 23:59:59 (stored as 0.999988426), but the second method will give you a datetime value with one or more days as the whole number part. This can be useful if you want to do calculations on times spanning more than one day.
The above behaviour is because dates and times are stored as real numbers with the whole number part representing days and the decimal part representing fractions of a day (i.e. times). In spite of misleading information from Microsoft here, dates actually start from 31/12/1899 (written as 0/1/1900) with serial number 0 and increment by 1 per day from then on.
I'm doing some benchmarking, and I want to use Excel to produce graphs of the results. I've got a simple but annoying problem which is baking my noodle.
The problem is that Excel insists that "time" means a time of day. It refuses to let me work with time durations. When I try to say "three minutes and six seconds", it misinterprets this as "three minutes and six seconds past midnight", which isn't what I meant at all.
I can work around the problem by laboriously converting everything to seconds. But then all my graphs are labelled in seconds, not minutes and seconds. Plus it's a pain to have to keep typing in =3*60+6 rather than just 3:06. And once I've done it, I have to look at the formula to check whether I entered the data correctly [and didn't screw up the formula].
Does anybody know how I can make Excel work with a time duration not anchored to a specific time of day?
You can easily do this with the normal "Time" data type - just change the format!
Excels time/date format is simply 1.0 equals 1 full day (starting on 1/1/1900). So 36 hours would be 1.5. If you change the format to [h]:mm, you'll see 36:00.
Therefore, if you want to work with durations, you can simply use subtraction, e.g.
A1: Start: 36:00 (=1.5)
A2: End: 60:00 (=2.5)
A3: Duration: =A2-A1 24:00 (=1.0)
Use format d "days" h:mm:ss or [h]:mm:ss, depending on your needs.
Say you have a duration of 30h 12m 54s:
h:mm:ss -> 6:12:54 (not correct for a duration)
[h]:mm:ss -> 30:12:54
d "days" h:mm:ss -> 1 days 6:12:54
Variations are possible: I like something like d"d" h"h" mm"m" ss"s" which formats as 1d 6h 12m 54s.
The custom format hh:mm only shows the number of hours correctly up to 23:59, after that, you get the remainder, less full days. For example, 48 hours would be displayed as 00:00, even though the underlaying value is correct.
To correctly display duration in hours and seconds (below or beyond a full day), you should use the custom format [h]:mm;# In this case, 48 hours would be displayed as 48:00.
Cheers.
With custom format of a cell you can insert a type like this: d "days", h:mm:ss, which will give you a result like 16 days, 13:56:15 in an excel-cell.
If you would like to show the duration in hours you use the following type [h]:mm:ss, which will lead to something like 397:56:15. Control check: 16 =(397 hours -13 hours)/24
I don't know how to make the chart label the axis in the format "X1 min : X2 sec", but here's another way to get durations, in the format of minutes with decimals representing seconds (.5 = 30 sec, .25 = 15 sec, etc.)
Suppose in column A you have your time data, for example in cell A1 you have 12:03:06, which your 3min 6sec data misinterpreted as 3:06 past midnight, and column B is free.
In cell B1 enter this formula: =MINUTE(A1) + SECOND(A1)/60 and hit enter/return. Grab the lower right corner of cell B2 and drag as far down as the A column goes to apply the formula to all data in col A.
Last step, be sure to highlight all of column B and set it to Number format (the application of the formula may have automatically set format to Time).
Highlight the cell(s)/column which you want as Duration, right click on the mouse to "Format Cells". Go to "Custom" and look for "h:mm" if you want to input duration in hour and minutes format. If you want to include seconds as well, click on "h:mm:ss". You can even add up the total duration after that.
Hope this helps.
The best way I found to resolve this issue was by using a combination of the above. All my cells were entered as a Custom Format to only show "HH:MM" - if I entered in "4:06" (being 4 minutes and 6 seconds) the field would show the numbers I entered correctly - but the data itself would represent HH:MM in the background.
Fortunately time is based on factors of 60 (60 seconds = 60 minutes). So 7H:15M / 60 = 7M:15S - I hope you can see where this is going. Accordingly, if I take my 4:06 and divide by 60 when working with the data (eg. to total up my total time or average time across 100 cells I would use the normal SUM or AVERAGE formulas and then divide by 60 in the formula.
Example =(SUM(A1:A5))/60. If my data was across the 5 time tracking fields was the 4:06, 3:15, 9:12, 2:54, 7:38 (representing MM:SS for us, but the data in the background is actually HH:MM) then when I work out the sum of those 5 fields are, what I want should be 27M:05S but what shows instead is 1D:03H:05M:00S. As mentioned above, 1D:3H:5M divided by 60 = 27M:5S ... which is the sum I am looking for.
Further examples of this are:
=(SUM(G:G))/60 and
=(AVERAGE(B2:B90)/60) and =MIN(C:C) (this is a direct check so no /60 needed here!).
Note that your "formula" or "calculation" fields (average, total time, etc) MUST have the custom format of MM:SS once you have divided by 60 as Excel's default thinking is in HH:MM (hence this issue). Your data fields where you are entering in your times should need to be changed from "General" or "Number" format to the custom format of HH:MM.
This process is still a little bit cumbersome to use - but it does mean that your data entry is still entered in very easy and is "correctly" displayed on screen as 4:06 (which most people would view as minutes:seconds when under a "Minutes" header). Generally there will only be a couple of fields needing to be used for formulas such as "best time", "average time", "total time" etc when tracking times and they will not usually be changed once the formula is entered so this will be a "one off" process - I use this for my call tracking sheet at work to track "average call", "total call time for day".
Let's say that you want to display the time elapsed between 5pm on Monday and 2:30pm the next day, Tuesday.
In cell A1 (for example), type in the date. In A2, the time. (If you type in 5 pm, including the space, it will display as 5:00 PM. If you want the day of the week to display as well, then in C3 (for example) enter the formula, =A1, then highlight the cell, go into the formatting dropdown menu, select Custom, and type in dddd.
Repeat all this in the row below.
Finally, say you want to display that duration in cell D2. Enter the formula, =(a2+b2)-(a1+b1). If you want this displayed as "22h 30m", select the cell, and in the formatting menu under Custom, type in h"h" m"m".
What I wound up doing was: Put time duration in by hand, e.g. 1 min, 03 sec. Simple but effective. It seems Excel overwrote everything else, even when I used the 'custom format' given in some answers.