You can't. When Excel sees 3:05, it assumes hours and minutes. Just one of the
defaults the Excel programmers chose which doesn't work for you. You could enter
3:05 in one cell, and have a helper cell which divides this by 60, that will
convert to mm:ss for you.

--
Regards,
Fred


"Karl Lejour" <Karl wrote in message
...

Hello,

I have lap times in minutes and seconds. When I type 3:05 (= 3 minutes 5
sec), excel records 3:05:00.
How can I type directly in a cell mm:ss without having to add 00: for the
hours?
I tried to format the cell, without succes