Excel stores dates as serial numbers starting from 1/1/1900
Your number 39696 is Sept 5 2008
It is not the result that is inconsistent but the formatting of your cells
Just format your cell as a date using the local custom dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy,
etc
--
Bernard V Liengme
Microsoft Excel MVP
http://people.stfx.ca/bliengme
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wrote in message
...
Hi, I want to calculate the amount of time between two dates, using
the following:
=IF('Data Entry'!A2=0,,IF('Data Entry'!S2="",Background!A2-'Data
Entry'!D2,'Data Entry'!S2-'Data Entry'!D2))
My problem is, that on some rows the calculation works fine and will
return a meaningful result, yet in others it returns a result such as
"39696". The formula, formatting and all other inputs seem fine, and
there is no reason that I have been able to identify yet which is
consistent between the differeing result.

Any ideas?

Thanks so much...