Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Calculating Elapsed Time with Excluded Periods.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 4, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Mahesh can figure out how to calculate the difference between two dates and times in minutes. However, he would like to calculate the difference in minutes, yet exclude the hours between 5:00 pm and 8:00 am as well as excluding everything between 5:00 pm Friday to 8:00 am Monday. For example, if the first date is 02/18/09 6:00 pm and the end date is 02/19/09 9:00 am, the correct result should be 60 minutes. Mahesh wonders if this is possible to do with a formula.
As should be obvious, a formula to achieve the desired result could be very complex. Many subscribers provided different solutions, including some great user-defined functions. Rather than focus on all of them, I figured I would just jump right to the most elegant (shortest) formula and suggest using it.
Assume that your starting date/time was in cell A1 and the ending date/time was in cell B1. Given these you could use the following formula:
=(NETWORKDAYS(A1,B1)-1)*("17:00"-"08:00") +IF(NETWORKDAYS(B1,B1),MEDIAN(MOD(B1,1),"17:00" ,"08:00"),"17:00")-MEDIAN(NETWORKDAYS(A1,A1) *MOD(A1,1),"17:00","08:00")
This is a single formula; it returns an elapsed time. This means that you will need to format the cell to show elapsed time. If you prefer to have the result as a regular integer, then you should use this version of the formula, instead:
=((NETWORKDAYS(A1,B1)-1)*("17:00"-"08:00") +IF(NETWORKDAYS(B1,B1),MEDIAN(MOD(B1,1),"17:00" ,"08:00"),"17:00")-MEDIAN(NETWORKDAYS(A1,A1) *MOD(A1,1),"17:00","08:00"))*1440
The change (multiplying the original result by 1440) results in a number of minutes rather than an elapsed time. The value 1440 is derived by multiplying 60 by 24 to get the number of minutes in a day.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (5399) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Calculating Elapsed Time with Excluded Periods.
Excel Smarts for Beginners! Featuring the friendly and trusted For Dummies style, this popular guide shows beginners how to get up and running with Excel while also helping more experienced users get comfortable with the newest features. Check out Excel 2013 For Dummies today!
Enter a time into a cell and you normally include a colon between the hours and minutes. If you want to skip that pesky ...
Discover MoreIt is no secret that you can store time values in an Excel worksheet. But do you really know how small of a time value ...
Discover MoreNeed to round the time in a cell to a certain value? There are a couple of ways you can do this with a formula.
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)
Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2024 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments