Using Excel for Timing

@J. Woolley,
I apologize for my misspelling of your name many times.

@Kiwerry
Thank you for spelling my name correctly (and the Red Baron's).

Just a test of indentation in the tips.net system (See comment by Tomek)

Public Sub testindentation_in_tips()
Dim Cel As Range, NewRange As Range

For Each Cel In Selection
    If IsNumeric(Cel) Then
        If NewRange Is Nothing Then
            Set NewRange = Cel
        Else
            Set NewRange = Union(Cel, NewRange)
        End If
    End If
Next

NewRange.Select
End Sub

Further to my previous comment:
each of the &​nbsp; characters is actually posted as a nonbreakable space. You can test this by copying that section into Word and displaying non-printing characters. Luckily, when pasting into VBA code, the hard spaces are lost, converted to regular ones, so the code will still work. so what's bad for posting comments is good for getting the tip's code into your VBA.
Cheers!

@Kiwerry,
I had varying success using hard spaces (unbreakable spaces) for this. This probably has to do with the fact that generally they are not clearly distinguishable from regular spaces, except in Word, when you display non-printing characters. Sometimes they are lost in copy and paste operation. The problem is, you cannot put hard spaces directly in VBA code as this breaks the code. So you need to copy the code to another program, preferably Notepad, do replacement as J. Wooley suggested, then copy the code again and paste it into the comments box on Tips website. Ufff...

Additional problem is that if you do this using Word, where you can see the hard spaces, copying from there and pasting it into the comment box (or Notepad) seems to convert the non-breakabke spaces back to regular ones. So, once posted all indentations are lost, but you cannot see which spaces you posted. Ughh...

I found a different solution, albeit a rather ugly one: Using HTML code for the non-breakable space. It is an ampersand followed by "nbsp;". I cannot write it here exactly as it would be transposed into an non-breakable space, but not if I put a zerospace after the ampersand (&​nbsp;)

If you use this approach, you can do the replacement of four paces by four &​nbsp; in Word. After that, the code will become very ugly, see (see Figure 1 below) , but the HTML non-breakable space will not be lost in copy/paste operation as Word treats it as just text. Upon posting the comment, the four &​nbsp; indentations will be resolved to white space.
I'll try it on a sample code posted below, hopefully it will look good after posting.
@Kiwerry: if you like to discuss this further, we probably should not do it inside this Tip. Send me an e-mail, my address is unhidden.

----------------
Public Sub testcode()
Dim Cel As Range, NewRange As Range

For Each Cel In Selection
    If IsNumeric(Cel) Then
        If NewRange Is Nothing Then
            Set NewRange = Cel
        Else
            Set NewRange = Union(Cel, NewRange)
        End If
    End If
Next

NewRange.Select

End Sub

@ J. Woolley: Thanks very much for your tips.
I have been doing timing with and without VBA - your first hint will help with the former.
The second tip will also be useful, thank you. I should have thought of trying the non-breaking space; I have been using it in Word and Excel for quite a while, particularly with surnames which have a prefix, like von Richthofen.

@Kiwerry
My Excel Toolbox includes the function VBAResult(Expression), where the text argument is a VBA expression (right side of equal sign). For example, this cell formula will return the number of seconds since midnight:
=VBAResult("Timer")
For Windows, the VBA function Timer returns fractional portions of a second. For Macintosh, Timer resolution is one second.
The VBA function Time returns the current system time as a Date serial number, so this cell formula returns the current hh:mm:ss when formatted appropriately:
=VBAResult("Time")
See https://sites.google.com/view/MyExcelToolbox/

Re. indenting, see David Bonin's 2021-01-18 comment here:
https://excelribbon.tips.net/T011598_Limiting_Who_Can_Delete_Data.html
I use Ctrl+H in Notepad to replace leading space chars with Alt+0160 non-breaking space chars. You can also use Ctrl+Shift+Space in Word for a non-breaking space char, which is visible when toggled with Ctrl+Shift+*.

P.S. I have seen comments with indented text - how is this done?
My attempt at indentation in the comment below failed.

Thanks, Allen.
The problem with using the hotkey Ctrl-Shift-: (the colon) to get Excel to enter the current time in a cell is that, in my experience, the time is truncated to the minute. If you are after seconds or decimals of a second you have a problem if you want to stick to a solution that doesn't require VBA.

One solution which occurred to me is to format the relevant cells as you would like them, e.g. hh:mm:ss.00. Then for each target cell
1) Enter the formula =NOW() into your target cell and press Enter; you should see
the time of entry with a resolution of 1/100 of a second.
2) Press F9 at the instant you would have hit Ctrl-Shift-:
this will update the time in the target cell
3) Immediately copy this cell and use Paste Special to paste the value back into it.

This method is very clunky and unsuitable for measuring a short time interval because of the time involved in replacing the formula in the target cell with its value and then entering the formula in the next target cell. The latter can be shortened if you are able to use your clipboard's history, or by filling a helper column with the =NOW() formula, and copying a nearby helper cell into the target cell and pressing Ctrl-V at the required instant before replacing the formula with its value.

If anyone knows a way of changing the "truncation" behaviour of the hotkey Ctrl-Shift-:
or can suggest a less unsatisfactory way of entering the current time into a cell at a particular instant than the one I described I would be very pleased to hear it.