I have 2 years worth of cumulative phone usage time totals in an Excel
workbook that are submitted by our phone service provider. The phone usage
columns are cumulative minutes and seconds by day (mm:ss) and some have been
entered as string formulas: ="1655:33"

However, many time totals have been converted to a date/time serial number,
so I have a displayed value of 939:53:00, that is actually 2/8/1900 3:53:00
AM. What I need is the string equivalent of the displayed value and not the
date/time serial number. Ive tried a number of VB conversion UDFs and I
can only successfully convert the values that do not exceed 23:59. At the
moment Im stumped.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ahead of time...

Kevin Backmann

Use a custom number format, enclosing minutes in square brackets, like this:

[m]:ss

"Kevin B" wrote:

I have 2 years worth of cumulative phone usage time totals in an Excel
workbook that are submitted by our phone service provider. The phone usage
columns are cumulative minutes and seconds by day (mm:ss) and some have been
entered as string formulas: ="1655:33"

However, many time totals have been converted to a date/time serial number,
so I have a displayed value of 939:53:00, that is actually 2/8/1900 3:53:00
AM. What I need is the string equivalent of the displayed value and not the
date/time serial number. Ive tried a number of VB conversion UDFs and I
can only successfully convert the values that do not exceed 23:59. At the
moment Im stumped.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ahead of time...

Kevin Backmann

Thanks, but unfortunately what is really minutes and seconds is treated as
hours:minutes:seconds and displayed as 939:53:00, instead of 939:53.

What I'm looking for is way to convert my displayed value to a string,
identical to the displayed value, I can lop off the :00 with left()/len()
function combo if 2 colons are found in the string.
--
Kevin Backmann


"hmm" wrote:

Use a custom number format, enclosing minutes in square brackets, like this:

[m]:ss

"Kevin B" wrote:

I have 2 years worth of cumulative phone usage time totals in an Excel
workbook that are submitted by our phone service provider. The phone usage
columns are cumulative minutes and seconds by day (mm:ss) and some have been
entered as string formulas: ="1655:33"

However, many time totals have been converted to a date/time serial number,
so I have a displayed value of 939:53:00, that is actually 2/8/1900 3:53:00
AM. What I need is the string equivalent of the displayed value and not the
date/time serial number. Ive tried a number of VB conversion UDFs and I
can only successfully convert the values that do not exceed 23:59. At the
moment Im stumped.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ahead of time...

Kevin Backmann

Remember that if you enter the data as 1655:33 it will be treated as hh:mm,
not as mm:ss
If you type it in as 0:1655:33, or as 1655:33.0, then it will be treated as
mm:ss, and (as hmm said) it will be displayed that way if the cell is
formattted as [m]:ss

If you do have data already stored as hh:mm instead of mm:ss, then you can
divide by 60 (either with a formula or by copying a cell with 60 in it and
then using Edit/ Paste Special/ Divide on your data cells), to convert
1655:33:0 to 0:1655:33.
--
David Biddulph

"hmm" wrote in message
...
Use a custom number format, enclosing minutes in square brackets, like
this:

[m]:ss

"Kevin B" wrote:

I have 2 years worth of cumulative phone usage time totals in an Excel
workbook that are submitted by our phone service provider. The phone
usage
columns are cumulative minutes and seconds by day (mm:ss) and some have
been
entered as string formulas: ="1655:33"

However, many time totals have been converted to a date/time serial
number,
so I have a displayed value of 939:53:00, that is actually 2/8/1900
3:53:00
AM. What I need is the string equivalent of the displayed value and not
the
date/time serial number. I've tried a number of VB conversion UDF's and
I
can only successfully convert the values that do not exceed 23:59. At
the
moment I'm stumped.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ahead of time...

Kevin Backmann

While not the most elegant of solutions, I've saved the Excel file as a tab
delimited file and imported the file into Access. I think that I will solve
my short term issue, but if anyone has any suggestions on the serial date to
string conversion I will gladly accept any pointers.

I've Googled the issue and there is tons 'o' stuff on calculating time
differences, but that's not what I'm looking for here.

Thanks to hmm (Mr. Hours & Minutes?) and to all the contributers on this site.
--
Kevin Backmann


"Kevin B" wrote:

I have 2 years worth of cumulative phone usage time totals in an Excel
workbook that are submitted by our phone service provider. The phone usage
columns are cumulative minutes and seconds by day (mm:ss) and some have been
entered as string formulas: ="1655:33"

However, many time totals have been converted to a date/time serial number,
so I have a displayed value of 939:53:00, that is actually 2/8/1900 3:53:00
AM. What I need is the string equivalent of the displayed value and not the
date/time serial number. Ive tried a number of VB conversion UDFs and I
can only successfully convert the values that do not exceed 23:59. At the
moment Im stumped.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ahead of time...

Kevin Backmann