Try this

Format cells as
0\:00\:00

"onlyinsyder" wrote:

I am having a little problem here. I am employed for a small television
station, and have created a worksheet to track how many times each commercial
spot is played, and at what time it is played. I need to be able to insert
the times quickly without typing in the colon, and have Excel insert the
colon for me (i.e. 12657 = 1:26:57). I figured that I could format my cell as
follows: "h:mm:ss"
This did not do the trick. When I insert a time without the colon, it
fromats it with a strange date. Anyone know of a custom format that will
work for this problem?