And it presumably dioesn't change what's displayed in the cell? In which
case it confirms that you've got text, not a time [which would be confirmed
if you try ISTEXT(A1) or ISNUMBER(A1)].
You may have spurious spaces floating about. Try selecting a blank cell,
copying it, then selecting your "times", and using edit/ paste special/ add.
There may be other spurious non-printing characters. CLEAN may help, after
which you may be able to convert as outlined a couple of sentences ago.
--
David Biddulph

"Mashuganah" wrote in message
...
When I change the format to General, the number displays the same,
"00:35,"
in the formula bar.

"David Biddulph" wrote:

If your cell is formatted as mm:[ss] , the mm is months, not minutes.
For
the m to be minutes use mm:ss or m:ss

You may therefore have different numbers from what you think you've got
(either for your data values or for your result, or both). Look at
what's
in the formula bar, or try formatting temporarily to General or Number
and
see whether the 0:35 comes out as 0.000405092592592593
--
David Biddulph

"Mashuganah" wrote in message
...
I need to average a list of minutes and seconds in mm:[ss] format (the
only
format that would display them properly):
0:35
0:40
0:39
0:42
0:26

Excel 2003 SP2 is giving 1:00 rather than 00:36. How do I get Excel to
do
this correctly?