by The tutorial demonstrates different ways to convert time to decimal in Excel. You will find a variety of formulas to change time to hours, minutes or seconds as well as convert text to time and vice versa.
Because Microsoft Excel uses a numeric system to store times, you can easily turn hours, minutes and seconds into numbers that you can use in other calculations.
In general, there are two ways to convert time to decimal in Excel - by changing the cell format and by using arithmetic calculations or Excel time functions, such as HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND. Further on in this tutorial, you will find the detailed explanation of the first way and formula examples demonstrating the other technique.
How to convert time to decimal number in Excel
Overall, there are three ways to change a time value to a decimal number: arithmetic operation, CONVERT function or a combination of three different Time functions.
The easiest way to convert time to decimal in Excel is to multiply the original time value by the number of hours, seconds or minutes in a day:
- To convert time to a number of hours, multiply the time by 24, which is the number of hours in a day.
- To convert time to minutes, multiply the time by 1440, which is the number of minutes in a day (24*60).
- To convert time to seconds, multiply the time time by 86400, which is the number of seconds in a day (24*60*60 ).
In the following sections, you will learn the other methods of converting times to a decimal number in Excel.
How to convert time to hours in Excel
This section demonstrates 3 different formulas to convert hours from the standard time format (hh:mm:ss) to a decimal number.
Formula 1: Arithmetic calculation
You already know the fastest way to convert a time value to a number of hours in Excel - multiplying by 24, i.e. by the number of hours in one day:
=A2*24
Where A2 is the time value.
To get the number of compete hours, embed the above formula in the INT function that will get rid of the fractional part:
=INT(A2*24)
Formula 2: CONVERT function
Another way to perform the "time > hours" conversion is to use the following Convert formula:
=CONVERT(A2, "day", "hr")
Formula 3: HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions
Finally, you can use a bit more complex formula, whose logic, however, is quite obvious. Extract the individual time units by using the HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions, then divide minutes by 60 (the number of minutes in an hour) and seconds by 3600 (the number of seconds in an hour), and add up the results:
=HOUR(A2) + MINUTE(A2)/60 + SECOND(A2)/3600
How to convert time to minutes in Excel
The same three methods can be used to convert minutes from the standard time format to a decimal number.
Formula 1: Arithmetic calculation
To convert time to total minutes, you multiply time by 1440, which is the number of minutes in one day (24 hours * 60 minutes = 1440):
=A2*1440
If you want to return the number of compete minutes, utilize the INT function like in the previous example:
=INT(A2*1440)
You can view the results in the screenshot below:
Formula 2: CONVERT function
To do the "time > minutes" conversion with the CONVERT(number, from_unit, to_unit) function, supply "day" as the unit to convert from and "mn" as the unit to convert to:
=CONVERT(A2, "day", "mn")
Formula 3: HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions
One more way to get the number of minutes is to multiply hours by 60 and divide seconds by the same number:
=HOUR(A2)*60 + MINUTE(A2) + SECOND(A2)/60
How to convert time to seconds in Excel
Converting time to total seconds in Excel can be done in a similar fashion.
Formula 1: Arithmetic calculation
Multiply the time value by 86400, which is the number of seconds in a day (24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds = 86400):
=A2*86400
Formula 2: CONVERT function
The formula is basically the same as in the above examples with the only difference that you convert the "day" unit to "sec":
=CONVERT(A2, "day", "sec")
Formula 3: HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions
Use the HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions like in the two previous examples (I believe at this point you don't need any further explanation of the formula's logic :)
=HOUR(A2)*3600 + MINUTE(A2)*60 + SECOND(A2)
Tips:
- If any of the above formulas returns a value formatted as time, simply change the cell's format to Generalto display it as a number.
- To convert time to a decimal number that represents the time in the internal Excel system, apply the General format to the cell. With this approach, 23:59:59 will be converted to 0.99999, 06:00 AM to 0.25, and 12:00 PM to 0.5. If an integer part of the converted number is greater than zero, it means that your cell contains both date and time values.
How to split date and time in Excel
As is often the case, your Excel worksheet may contain dates and times in one cell, while you want to split them into two separate cells.
Remembering that in the internal Excel system the date value is stored as a whole part and the time value as a fractional part of a decimal number, you can extract the date using the INT function, which rounds the cell value down to the nearest integer.
Supposing your original dates and times are in column A, the following formula will accomplish the separation:
=INT(A2)
To extract the time portion, subtract the date returned by the above formula from the original date and time value:
=A2-B2
Where column A contains the original date & time values and column B contains the dates returned by the INT function.
If you'd rather not have time values linked to the separated dates (for example, you may want to remove the date column in the future), you can use the following MOD formula that refers to the original data only:
=MOD(A2,1)
Tip. If the separated date and time values are not displayed properly, change the format of the new columns to Date and Time, respectively.
This is how you split date and time in Excel. If you want to further separate hours, minutes and seconds into individual columns, then use the HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions, as demonstrated in How to get hours, minutes and seconds from a timestamp.
How to spell time in Excel
Sometimes, you may need to convert time into the format that reads something like "# days, # hours, # minutes and # seconds". A good thing is that you already know all the ingredients of the formula:
- Extract days using the INT function;
- Extract time units with HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND functions, and
- Concatenate all parts in a single formula.
Having difficulties with figuring out a proper formula for your worksheet? The following example will make things easy!
Supposing you have the dates of upcoming events in column B beginning in cell B4, and the current date and time returned by the NOW() function in cell B1.
The formula to calculate the time difference is as simple as =B4-$B$1. Of course, nothing prevents you from subtracting the current date and time directly with =B4-NOW().
And now, let's make a countdown timer that would show how many days, hours, minutes and seconds are left until each event.
The formula to enter in cell D4 is as follows:
=INT(C4) & " days, " & HOUR(C4) & " hours, " & MINUTE(C4) & " minutes and " & SECOND(C4) & " seconds"
If you wish to get rid of 0 values, like in cells D6 and D7 in the screenshot above, then include the following IF statements:
=IF(INT(C4)>0, INT(C4)&" days, ","") & IF(HOUR(C4)>0, HOUR(C4) & " hours, ","") & IF(MINUTE(C4)>0, MINUTE(C4) & " minutes and ","") & IF(SECOND(C4)>0, SECOND(C4) & " seconds","")
All zeros are gone!
Note. When either of the above formulas refers to a negative number, the #NUM! error will appear. This may happen when you subtract a bigger time from a smaller one.
An alternative way to write time in words in Excel is to apply the following custom time format to the cell: d "day," h "hours," m "minutes and" s "seconds". No formulas and no calculations are required! For more information, please see Creating a custom time format in Excel.
Convert text to time in Excel
If your time formulas and calculations do not work right, time values formatted as text is often the cause. The fastest way to convert text to time in Excel is using the TIMEVALUE function.
The Excel TIMEVALUE function has just one argument:
Time_text is a text string in any of the time formats that Excel can recognize. For example:
=TIMEVALUE("6:20 PM")
=TIMEVALUE("6-Jan-2015 6:20 PM")
=TIMEVALUE(A2) where A2 contains a text string
As you see, the formulas with cell references and corresponding text strings deliver identical results. Also, please notice the left alignment of time strings (text values) in cells A2 and A6 and right-aligned converted time values in column D.
Convert time to text in Excel
Supposing you have an Excel file full of times formatted to look like "8:30:00 AM" and you want to convert them to the text format. Simply changing the cell's format to TEXT won't work because this would change your time values to underlying numeric representation of the time. For example, 8:30:00 AM will be converted to decimal 0.354166666666667.
So, how do you convert cells to the text format so that your cells still have the time in them? The answer is to use the TEXT function that converts a numeric value to text with the display formatting that you specify, for example:
=TEXT($A2,"h:mm:ss")
The screenshot below demonstrates other possible formats:
How to convert numbers to time format in Excel
If you have a list of numbers such as 1, 2, 3.5 and you want to convert them to a time format, for example 1:00:00, 2:00:00 or 3:30 AM, perform the following steps.
- Divide the numbers by 24 (there are 24 hours in a day). The formula can be as simple as =A2/24.
- Select the cell(s) with the formula result, right-click and select Format Cells from the context menu or press Ctrl+1. Either way, the Format Cells dialog will appear, you select Time on the left pane under Category, and choose the format you want on the right pane under Type. Please see How to format time in Excel for more details.
If your time exceeds 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds, use these guidelines to correctly show it.
That's all for today. If someone wants to get the first-hand experience with the formulas discussed in this article, you are most welcome to download the sample workbook below.
If you want to learn a few more useful formulas to calculate times in Excel, please check out the related tutorials at the end of this page. I thank you for reading and hope to see you again next week!
Practice workbook for download
Converting time in Excel - examples (.xlsx file)
459 comments
How to Write 15:30 into 15 hours 30 minutes?
i don't have any format like this in format cell- custom
You can write (hh "hours" mm "minutes") in custom window, without the brackets(). I have written it just to make it look different from other text.
How to write 15:30 into 15 hours 30 minutes?
Thanks in Advance.
I need to convert minutes to individual units
column A has the date, column B has the start time column C has the end time
8-22 mins = 1 Unit
23-37= 2 Units
38-52 = 3 Units
53-67 = 4 Units
The Units are made so you can choose them from a drop box.
I need it so that the times = the correct number of units, if they enter the wrong units or no units it would highlight. Or else if the time equals 7 mins or less that the time is highlighted. PLEASE HELP
Hi,
I have a Question for my offical report work.
i used this formula to =INT(I2-A2) & " days, " & HOUR(I2-A2) & " hours, " & MINUTE(I2-A2) & " minutes and " & SECOND(I2-A2) & " seconds" to get the exact days,hours,min,&sec . in this scenario i need to covert this values into percentage .
My task time is 5 hours if i exceed the limit the cell wants to show the exact percentage
eg1 : i received one mail on 22 jan 2017 12:14:20 pm and i replied to that mail on 22 jan 2017 20:41:20 pm . it exceed my task line so could you please help me what formula should i used to solve the issue.
Anyone out there, can you help me, please?
I am trying to convert 21 hours 36 minutes to a decimal format in Excel, for a part-time weekly timesheet i.e. 21.6 hours, what formula do I need to use to achieve this?
How can I calculate the time into hours?
Day In Out Regular Hours
1 7:13am 1:15pm
How would you calculate an end time if the start time is 8am and the hours worked is 6.75?
Hi everyone,
How can I calculate agricultural land units, I have
20 Marla=1 Kanal
8Kanal=1 Acre (i.e. 1 Acre is equal to 160 Marla)
How to Add, Subtract, Multiply or Divide these units ?
kindly help
How do I show only values and not "0"
examples
Time result 0:03:51 would show as 3:51
Time result 0:30:10 would show as 30:10
Time result 0:00:22 would show as :22 or 0:22
The current cell formula is
=TIME(N160,Q160*60,P160)
Thank you
I have data that is formatted in the following manner.
"22 minutes" where the minutes are written as a number followed by the word "minutes" as well as "1 hr 30 min" where the time is larger than an hour and they are written with a number for the hour followed by "hr" and the a number for the minutes followed by "min". Is there a way to first separate the two different notations and then convert the numbers to a format hh:mm:ss? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Hai All,
How to convent from number to time e.g.085600 to 8:56:00 AM
Thanks
Hi Elnur,
You can use below formula to count 24 hrs time:-
suppose your 1 time in column A and 2 time in column B then type-
=((b2-a2)+(b2<a2))
change number format to hh:mm by pressing ctrl+1.
enjoy...!!
Hi,
we have a daily reports and they are counted from 20:00 hours to 08:00 hours, I found a problem counting the hours,
for example if work started at 23:00 and completed at 06:00 hours, what formula shall I use to get right result?
xls. simply takes 23:00-06:00 = 17, which is not right,
I found a way but I believe the is must be a easier way??
Thanks
thanks
HOW TO COUNT TOTAL MONTH HR (MINES ATTEND... SHRRT DATE 26 OCT TO 25 NOV TOTAL 31 DAY ,SO HOW TO COUNT 31 DAY TIME
Hi All,
I try to calculate total hours and minutes for below list of values.
05:07:00 05:33:00 06:29:00 06:29:00 06:28:00 07:01:00
(Those values are placed from B3 column the G3 column)
I tried this formula
=MINUTE (SUM (B3: G3) /60) &":"&SECOND (SUM (B3: G3) /60)
Now I have got exact time, but there are some discrepancies in minutes.
As per the formula I need to get "37:07:00", but I used to get "37:10:00".
Kindly help some one to solve this issue.
Regards
Kannan Mohan
Hi all professionals,
could you please helping me to calculate from number to be a time, ex: 7.15 to be 7:15 ?
Thank you in advance..
Daovon
Hi Daovon,
The first thought that comes to mind is using the Replace All feature to change all dots (.) to colons (:). As soon as you do this, Excel will interpret your entries as times.
hello, i'm adding the numbers of hours worked but when i autosum the values, it is not getting the right result. how to i add time values in decimal point? thank you
Is there a way to set an excel equation so that for time, one box says 0700 the next says something like 0930 and the net time box says 2.5 ?
I have a big spreadsheet with times spent on a task stored in this format
dd:hh:mm:ss (days:hours:minutes:seconds)
The second column shows how many tasks completed in that time (usually in the thousands).
Is there a simple way to show how long is spent on each task?
Thanks