Forum Discussion

Mark_Doehnert's avatar
Mark_Doehnert
Copper Contributor
Jun 17, 2020

Excel 365 and mm:ss format issue

I set some cells in Excel 365 to Custom - mm:ss. Then I tried to enter data, like an event that was 45 minutes and 10 seconds long. So I enter 45:10 (45 colon 10).  But what shows up in the cell is 45:10:00 and what shows up in the formula bar is "1/1/1900 5:45:00 PM" and then the numbers in the cell itself seem to change to 10:00.

 

Only if I instead select mm:ss.0 as the custom format can I get 45:10 to enter and show as that, which shows as 45:10.0.

 

Any idea what is happening and what I am doing wrong?  Instructions at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/format-numbers-as-dates-or-times-418bd3fe-0577-47c8-8caa-b4d30c528309 do not seem to help me.

excel

1 Reply

  • JKPieterse's avatar
    JKPieterse
    Silver Contributor
    Jun 17, 2020
    As far as I know, Excel expects you to be entering hours:minutes:seconds so 45:00 is interpreted as 45 hours and 0 minutes. If you want to enter a time with only minutes, you have to start with zero hours, like so:
    00:45:10 giving you 45 minutes and ten seconds.

Resources