Time conversion

francesco1620   You can enter 0m 15s in the form 0:15.0 .  The presence of a decimal fraction allows Excel to interpret that as 0m 15.0s.

(FYI, in this form, Excel permits seconds to have a precision of up to only 3 decimal places -- milliseconds.  If we enter more precision, Excel rounds to 3 decimal places.  For example, 12:34.5678 is interpreted exactly the same as 12:34.568.)

You might want to change the default format from mm:ss.0 to [m]:ss .

It is prudent to always format the first time specifier (h, m or s) in square-brackets, just in case the calculated or entered exceeds the limit of the specifier (23 for h; 59 for m and s), by accident or on purpose.

For example, if we enter 765:34.0 (765m 34s), Excel displays 45:34.0 by default because 765m 34s is indeed 12h 45m 34s.

If we change the format to [m]:ss , we see the time as we entered it, namely 765:34 .