How Excel handles dates and times is a bit tricky until you understand what
it's doing behind the scenes. In order to do math on times (because times
are in base 60 rather than base 100 like most other things), Excel does a
trick where it stores times as portions of a day. So, if you enter 12:00PM,
noon, it is actually storing .5, or half a day. If you format your dates as
numbers, you'll see this. 0 is exactly midnight, .5 is noon, .75 is 6:00 pm,
etc.

What you probably want to do is graph the number of minutes elapsed. You
can input your data as a time like 00:01:27 for 1 minute and 27 seconds.
Then, you can convert that time value into human-readable minutes by
multiplying by 1440 (the number of minutes in a day). Assuming you have your
times in column A, column B will just contain =A1*1440 .

The result, for example, with 00:02:00 will be 2. (1440 * 00:02:00 = 2
minutes)

I'm thinking you can graph the values in column B and get what you need.

Happy calculating!

"Craig" wrote:

Excel 2007 cell formating - I need to enter stopwatch testing times in
minutes and seconds format. I have tried mm:ss and [mm]:ss. With both Excel
wants to add "12 hours" in front of and "AM" behind all the values I enter.
With the 12 hours the values will not graph correctly. These values are not
the result of a calculation. I simply want to enter the values directly onto
the spreadsheet and create a graph. How do I overcome this problem? Thank
you.

Thanks to each of who responded so promptly. These were each a great help.
It just means that I apparently have to enter a lot of zeros (the hour) and
colons that I was hoping to avoid. All I have is minutes and seconds. I
don't like that Excel displays the 12 and the AM for a user to see, which may
be confusing. Nonetheless, thanks again to all.



"GSnyder" wrote:

How Excel handles dates and times is a bit tricky until you understand what
it's doing behind the scenes. In order to do math on times (because times
are in base 60 rather than base 100 like most other things), Excel does a
trick where it stores times as portions of a day. So, if you enter 12:00PM,
noon, it is actually storing .5, or half a day. If you format your dates as
numbers, you'll see this. 0 is exactly midnight, .5 is noon, .75 is 6:00 pm,
etc.

What you probably want to do is graph the number of minutes elapsed. You
can input your data as a time like 00:01:27 for 1 minute and 27 seconds.
Then, you can convert that time value into human-readable minutes by
multiplying by 1440 (the number of minutes in a day). Assuming you have your
times in column A, column B will just contain =A1*1440 .

The result, for example, with 00:02:00 will be 2. (1440 * 00:02:00 = 2
minutes)

I'm thinking you can graph the values in column B and get what you need.

Happy calculating!

"Craig" wrote:

Excel 2007 cell formating - I need to enter stopwatch testing times in
minutes and seconds format. I have tried mm:ss and [mm]:ss. With both Excel
wants to add "12 hours" in front of and "AM" behind all the values I enter.
With the 12 hours the values will not graph correctly. These values are not
the result of a calculation. I simply want to enter the values directly onto
the spreadsheet and create a graph. How do I overcome this problem? Thank
you.

You can simplify the data entry a bit.
It doesn't need 00:01:27; you can use 0:1:27 (or 1:27.0)
--
David Biddulph

"Craig" wrote in message
...
Thanks to each of who responded so promptly. These were each a great
help.
It just means that I apparently have to enter a lot of zeros (the hour)
and
colons that I was hoping to avoid. All I have is minutes and seconds. I
don't like that Excel displays the 12 and the AM for a user to see, which
may
be confusing. Nonetheless, thanks again to all.



"GSnyder" wrote:

How Excel handles dates and times is a bit tricky until you understand
what
it's doing behind the scenes. In order to do math on times (because
times
are in base 60 rather than base 100 like most other things), Excel does a
trick where it stores times as portions of a day. So, if you enter
12:00PM,
noon, it is actually storing .5, or half a day. If you format your dates
as
numbers, you'll see this. 0 is exactly midnight, .5 is noon, .75 is 6:00
pm,
etc.

What you probably want to do is graph the number of minutes elapsed. You
can input your data as a time like 00:01:27 for 1 minute and 27 seconds.
Then, you can convert that time value into human-readable minutes by
multiplying by 1440 (the number of minutes in a day). Assuming you have
your
times in column A, column B will just contain =A1*1440 .

The result, for example, with 00:02:00 will be 2. (1440 * 00:02:00 = 2
minutes)

I'm thinking you can graph the values in column B and get what you need.

Happy calculating!

"Craig" wrote:

Excel 2007 cell formating - I need to enter stopwatch testing times in
minutes and seconds format. I have tried mm:ss and [mm]:ss. With both
Excel
wants to add "12 hours" in front of and "AM" behind all the values I
enter.
With the 12 hours the values will not graph correctly. These values
are not
the result of a calculation. I simply want to enter the values
directly onto
the spreadsheet and create a graph. How do I overcome this problem?
Thank
you.

Thank you.


"David Biddulph" wrote:

You can simplify the data entry a bit.
It doesn't need 00:01:27; you can use 0:1:27 (or 1:27.0)
--
David Biddulph

"Craig" wrote in message
...
Thanks to each of who responded so promptly. These were each a great
help.
It just means that I apparently have to enter a lot of zeros (the hour)
and
colons that I was hoping to avoid. All I have is minutes and seconds. I
don't like that Excel displays the 12 and the AM for a user to see, which
may
be confusing. Nonetheless, thanks again to all.



"GSnyder" wrote:

How Excel handles dates and times is a bit tricky until you understand
what
it's doing behind the scenes. In order to do math on times (because
times
are in base 60 rather than base 100 like most other things), Excel does a
trick where it stores times as portions of a day. So, if you enter
12:00PM,
noon, it is actually storing .5, or half a day. If you format your dates
as
numbers, you'll see this. 0 is exactly midnight, .5 is noon, .75 is 6:00
pm,
etc.

What you probably want to do is graph the number of minutes elapsed. You
can input your data as a time like 00:01:27 for 1 minute and 27 seconds.
Then, you can convert that time value into human-readable minutes by
multiplying by 1440 (the number of minutes in a day). Assuming you have
your
times in column A, column B will just contain =A1*1440 .

The result, for example, with 00:02:00 will be 2. (1440 * 00:02:00 = 2
minutes)

I'm thinking you can graph the values in column B and get what you need.

Happy calculating!

"Craig" wrote:

Excel 2007 cell formating - I need to enter stopwatch testing times in
minutes and seconds format. I have tried mm:ss and [mm]:ss. With both
Excel
wants to add "12 hours" in front of and "AM" behind all the values I
enter.
With the 12 hours the values will not graph correctly. These values
are not
the result of a calculation. I simply want to enter the values
directly onto
the spreadsheet and create a graph. How do I overcome this problem?
Thank
you.