Forum Discussion
PLEASE HELP ME. Excel Time Formatting Not Working?
PLEASE HELP ME!!! I created an excel workbook for tracking fitness workouts, I record the data such as weight lifted, number of reps, and rest times between sets. I formatted the cells so they express your rest times in terms of minutes and seconds (I used the custom "H:MM" format of time option). But whenever I record the amount of time you spend during cardio exercise, the formatting gets COMPLETELY SCREWED UP because when I type 28:44 (28 minutes and 44 seconds) of cardio duration, it instantly turns into 4:44 (4 minutes and 44 seconds). But if I type 20:00 (20 minutes) of cardio duration, it stays as 20:00 (20 minutes) and it never turns into something else. Why do some of the numbers like 28:44 transform into a complete different number when I enter them? I uploaded 3 screenshots below to better express what I mean.
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3 Replies
don't know why my previous post didn't show but what the others are trying to say is that you entered 28:44 but that is hours:min so that was 1day, 4hours, 44mins and showing hh:mm means you see 4:44 (the day is hidden).
you need to use the format mm:ss under custom to SHOW mins:sec
as noted by others, you need to ENTER the time 0:28:44 for excel to recognize it as hours:min:sec (if you only enter 28:44 excel assumes that to be hours:min)
Alternatively you can enter it as 28:44.0 and excel will recognize that as min:sec and tenths of a second
In Excel 28:44 means 28 hours 44 minutes. If you want to enter 28 minutes 44 seconds, you have to enter like 00:28:44. If you want to enter 28 hour then format the cell as
[h]:mmWhy choose h:mm when you want to key in minutes and seconds?
Set hh:mm:ss and key in 0:28:44 and 0:20:0.
