Welcome toExcel.Tips.Net
Tips.Net Home
ExcelTips Home
Ask an Excel Question
Make a Comment
ExcelTips FAQ
ExcelTips Premium
Learn Access Now
Free Printable Forms
Beauty Tips
Car Tips
Cleaning Tips
College Tips
Cooking Tips
Excel2007 Tips
ExcelTips
Family Tips
Gardening Tips
Health Tips
Home Tips
Legal Tips
Money Tips
Organizing Tips
Pest Tips
Pet Tips
Wedding Tips
Word2007 Tips
WordTips
Advertise on the
ExcelTips Site
Filtering Columns for Unique Values
Printing Multiple Worksheets on a Single Page
Excel allows you to enter many things into a cell, including times. This leads some people to use Excel to help calculate elapsed times. For instance, you may have a column that contains a starting time, another that contains an ending time, and then use a third column to calculate the time between the beginning and ending time.
In such situations, you may be tempted to simply put the following as your formula in the cells of the third column:
=B2-A2
This will work fine, provided the time shown in B2 is always later than the time shown in A2. However, you will get erroneous results if the times do not fit this rigid stricture. What do you do if you are running operations around the clock, and it is just as likely that the value at A2 will be just before midnight and the value in B2 will be after midnight?
One solution is to make sure that you always enter dates with your times. If you do this, then B2 will always be later than A2. For many people, however, this is a bother. If you find yourself simply entering the time, then you are still up the creek.
If you enter your times without an AM/PM designation using a 12-hour clock, then you should use the following formula in the cells of the third column:
=IF(A2>B2,(B2+0.5)-A2,B2-A2)
This formula uses the IF function to determine if the beginning time is later than the ending time. If it is, then .5 (which is half a day, or 12 hours) is added to the ending time before the subtraction is done. If the beginning time is earlier then the ending time, then a normal subtraction operation is done.
If you use an AM/PM designation in your times, or you enter information using a 24-hour clock, then the formula must change just a bit. Now it should appear as follows:
=IF(A2>B2,(B2+1)-A2,B2-A2)
Now, instead of adding only half a day, you are adding a whole day (24 hours) to the ending time. This, again, provides the proper result.
It is interesting to note that in both of these instances, Excel allows you to add hours and minutes, if desired. While the above example is clean and simple, the following could also have been used:
=IF(A19>B19,(B19+"24:00")-A19,B19-A19)
Regardless of the formula you use, once it is entered you need to make sure the cell with the formula is formatted to properly show elapsed time. You do this by following these steps:
Your cell now shows the correct elapsed hours, minutes, and seconds.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2819) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 2000 2002 2003 2007
Got the Time? Understanding the ins and outs of working with times and dates can be confusing. Remove the confusion--ExcelTips: Times and Dates is an invaluable resource for learning how best to work with times and dates.