Forum Discussion
Time formatting in Excel
I'm trying to do a dashboard using an export of data from a 10km race. The Chip time is shown in minutes (elapsed) but when I click in the cell in Excel is shows a completely different format / formula (I'm not sure which).
When I bring the file into Tableau it shows as a date in the format above the chip time but I'd like to be able to show and analyse the chip time in MM:SS format. Picture attached.....
11 Replies
If you use the MOD formula I suggested, it will strip off the date element.
Then copy the formula results and paste values back over the original data.
Try the read into Tableau again and this time it should show as a time and not a datetime.
PeterBartholomew1 , but that doesn't work for the elapsed time.
I rather assumed elapsed time would work correctly with either the datetime or the time, provided the race is not run at midnight. Something that might require more careful handling is any gun/chip calibration errors that could be positive or negative. I am also puzzled by a timing system that times to the nearest minute; I am more used to 1/100ths of a second.
If you want to remove the surplus 24hrs with a formula then
= MOD(chiptime,1)
will do it. Otherwise change the number formatting to
hh:mm:ss
and the day will no longer show.
- I would just ignore the date part the formula bar displays, it should not affect your results unless you are doing date calculations as well.
Thanks JKPieterse and @Peter_Bartholomew. I've attached a two line sample of the challenge. I can't ignore the date aspect because it does interfere with the MM:SS format when I try and analyse it in Tableau. The formula given I can't make work.
If you can look at the attached for 2 mins I'd be grateful.
- I see the problem. Because the time is more than 24 hrs, Excel adds the strange date part in the formula bar. Perhaps you can avoid the problem by formatting the time column as decimal number and then use tabloid to do the time format? Like the others I don't know tableau.
