Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 19, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021
Bud has a cell that contains elapsed time. If the cell contains an elapsed time of 8:20:00, he would like it to show as a decimal equivalent, such as (in this case) 8.3. He wonders if this can be done through formatting.
The short answer is no, this cannot be done through formatting alone. It can, however, be handled through a formula combined with formatting. For instance, let's say the elapsed time is in cell B7. In another cell you could use the following:
=B7*24
That's it; now you just need to format the result of the formula as a numeric value, including as many decimal places as desired.
This approach works because of the way that Excel stores dates and times internally. The portion of the internal value that is to the right of the decimal point is the portion of a full day, so multiplying by 24 gives you the number of hours in decimal format.
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