Hi all,

When I try to type in "1:500" without any formula in it plain text excel
return a value of "0.388888889". Why is that and what is the colon mean. I
try to work it out i got no clue how excel got that value.

Thanks in advance


Jason

Excel sees 1:500 as a time.

If you format the cell to Time, you will see 9:20:00 AM

See Chip Pearson's site for info on how Excel calculates dates and times.

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm#AddingTimes

To enter 1:500 or similar, preface with a single quote(') or pre-format the
cells as Text.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Tue, 26 Sep 2006 18:58:01 -0700, Xcel wrote:

Hi all,

When I try to type in "1:500" without any formula in it plain text excel
return a value of "0.388888889". Why is that and what is the colon mean. I
try to work it out i got no clue how excel got that value.

Thanks in advance


Jason

Hi Jason,

The colon tells excel the input is time, so to excel 1:500
is 1 hour 500 minutes.

If you type an apostrophe before your input like '1:500
it will stay as text.

HTH
Martin