Although you may have entered 5:08 (meaning 5 minutes and 8 seconds),
Excel will probably have taken this to mean 5 hours and 8 minutes. You
will need to enter it as 0:5:08 or as 5:08.0 for Excel to interpret it
correctly. Format the cell as h:mm:ss to see what Excel has done.

To convert to your proper time, you will need to divide each time by
60 - an easy way is to put 60 in a blank cell somewhere and click
<copy on that cell. Then highlight all the cells with those times in
and Edit | Paste Special | Values (check) | Divide (check) | OK and
<Esc. Then you can delete the original cell.

You will need to format the cells as [m]:ss.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Sep 7, 10:45*pm, Eric Parker <Eric
wrote:
I have an Excel spreadsheet with mile split times for cross country runners
in one column (e.g. 5:08, meaning 5 minutes, 8 seconds) and 2 mile split
times in the next column (e.g. 10:15). *The third column is the difference
between the mile and 2 mile times which is the time the runner ran for the
second mile. *How can I have Excel do this calculation, and what format do I
need to put it in considering I do not need hours, days, dates, years, AM,
PM, etc.? *I also would like to have a fourth column which displays the
difference (in seconds) between the third column and the first column, which
can be either a positive or a negative number to show how much the runner
sped up or slowed down.