Excel: Formula to calculate time and day differences

Excel: Formula to calculate time and day differences

Please note that Excel formulas cannot be applied to characters and so you will first need to convert the date completely into numerical form.

If you type"Feb 1, 2011 8:30 AM" and press enter into a cell then it will automatically get changed into "2/1/2011 8:00" format. I will suggest you to change all the dates to this format by just clicking once onto each cell containing dates and press enter.

By default you will get the above format. Once you get the above format you can easily get the total difference between two dates in hh:mm:ss format by using the formula "=A2-A1" (considering that both cell A2 and A1 contains date). 

Once you get the answer, select that cell and change its format to [h]:mm:ss, by using cell formatting and then selecting custom category.

Also note that you can select many more formats for your answer available in the custom section of cell formatting. Thanks!   

Please check the attachment for more idea. It contains a sample.