68

I've got a Google Spreadsheet that looks roughly like this:

 Date        | Start time  | End time    | Minutes
 ------------+-------------+-------------+-----------
 1/11/2012   | 11:39       | 12:41       | ?!
 ------------+-------------+-------------+-----------
             |             |             |

Right now if I fill in the number of minutes between the two times of day by hand. Is there a straight-forward way to calculate a time delta and have the spreadsheet do it for me?

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  • Hi Stefano, perhaps you can take some time and evaluate the answers given. – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Aug 2 '13 at 18:58
  • 1
    @jacob As far as I can work out, my answer still works. I'll try to clarify and improve it a bit. – Stefano Palazzo Aug 5 '13 at 6:49

12 Answers 12

60

Google has added a new number format called Duration. Set your start and end fields to Format -> Number -> Time and your calculation field to Format -> Number -> Duration

Once you have done that you can subtract the fields to get the difference as noted by Stefano Palazzo in his answer.

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45

Yes, If your time fields are properly formatted (click Format → Number → Time) you can just add and subtract times:

=C2-B2

or

21:58:00 - 20:44:00 = 1:14:00

This will give you the time delta as HH:MM:SS. And if you want to calculate the number of minutes, you can use the Hour(), Minute() and Second() functions on that field:

=(Hour(D2) * 60) + Minute(D2) + (Second(D2) / 60)

Of course, if there are leap-seconds, time zone changes, or if an event takes longer than 24 hours, you will still have to adjust the results manually.

A warning

If one event stretches past midnight, say from 23:50 to 00:10, this will show up as a negative time!

In oder to have these events handled 'correctly', you can either put "24:10" or split the event into two.

A Better way

Even though it's a bit harder to input data, the most reliable way to do this is to mark the beinning and end field as "Date Time" and the delta field as "Hours", which will look like this:

Beginning          End                  Delta
8/1/2013 0:00:00   8/2/2013 12:30:00    36:30:00
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  • This doesn't appear to work anymore. I think you need to choose Format > Number > Hours (vs. time). I get a very odd decimal number when I try to subtract simple hourly difference. – Elijah Lynn Jul 5 '13 at 17:27
  • @ElijahLynn this odd number are the number of days. Multiplying times 24 and 60 will give you the number of minutes, – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Jul 21 '13 at 12:36
  • If someone wants to get date and time in one cell, he can merge just by addition: A1 + B1. – wzbozon Aug 3 '16 at 9:02
8

If you add the following formula in D2, then the minutes are calculated automatically:

Formula

=ARRAYFORMULA(IF(ISBLANK(B2:B)=FALSE,((C2:C-B2:B)*24*60),""))

Explained

The difference between the times, as per decimal format, is expressed in days. Therefore multiplying times 24 time 60 will yield minutes

Remark

There is one prerequisite: column D needs to be formated as 'normal'.

Example

See example file I created: Delta Time

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7

For a more robust solution, we uses a custom Function.

1. Adding the custom function

Using the Script Editor (follow instruction in https://developers.google.com/apps-script/execution_custom_functions) - writes:

function toEpoch (indate) {
  return indate.getTime();
}

2. Add formular

Then in the cell, writes:

=(toEpoch(C2)-toEpoch(B2)) / 60*1000

Which convert the difference in Epoch milliseconds into minutes.

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  • ... I did this, to make sure to convert it and convert it to seconds already (from milliseconds): function toEpoch (data) { return new Date(data) / 1000; } – user1278519 Apr 23 '17 at 18:06
7

I've done a lot of experimentation. This is the easiest way to calculate a time delta in Google Spreadsheets. Format the cell containing the formula like this:

Formula cell formatting

Format > Number > More Formats > More date and time formats, delete "second" and :. Then, format the End time and Start time cells like this: h:mm am/pm.

Input time cell formatting

Use the formula =abs(end time - start time). This gives you an absolute value, so there won't be negative time values.

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4

If you want your time delta to be measured in days, use

=DAYS(end_date, start_date)
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  • That's true. However, I came here trying to find the difference in days (and came back later to give an answer when I found it elsewhere), which leads me to the assumption that my answer could benefit others in my same situation. Since it's such a related topic, I didn't think it was worth opening a new question, especially since the title doesn't specify the unit of measure. But that was just my reasoning. What do you think? – e18r Oct 7 '17 at 20:37
  • @pnuts If you find an answer that is useful but slightly out of the scope of the question, you can also just edit the question (in this case to say minutes or hours or days or whatever). I'm am just one guy, the question has 100,000 views. – Stefano Palazzo Oct 9 '17 at 15:07
3

So much simpler: look at this B2: 23:00 C2: 1:37 D2: =C2-B2+(B2>C2)

Why it works, time is a fraction of a day, the comparison B2>C2 returns True (1) or False (0), if true 1 day (24 hours) is added. http://www.excelforum.com/excel-general/471757-calculating-time-difference-over-midnight.html

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3

You may try TIMEVALUE() as well.

In the above case, the solution would be:

(TIMEVALUE(End Time) - TIMEVALUE(Start Time))*24*60 will give you the time difference in MINUTES.

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  • Welcome Sujeeth! Good answer, I added some formatting to make it easier to read. – Vidar S. Ramdal Oct 16 '18 at 13:18
1

In Google Sheets, I used the formula as below

=Round((hour(A2-A1)*60 + minute(A2-A1))/60,2)

to give me the difference in decimal hours.

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-1

=(C2-B1)*1440 then set the format to "Plain Text".

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-1

For my personal application:

StartTime (columnA)| EndTime(Column B)| Date (Column C)

This worked for me:
=if(B4-A4<0,(B4+C4+1)-(A4+C4),B4-A4); Format cell as Format\Time\Duration.

For true condition: formula inspired by Stefano Palazzo's comments.

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  • p.s. date is associated with StartTime even if StopTime rolled over to the next day, which is why I added +1 to the date for EndTime. If your EndTime rolls over by more than a day, +1 obviously won't work anymore. – Bob K Jan 10 '17 at 4:41
-2

I agree that the time delta is expressed in days so to get back to say minutes you should multiply the difference by 1440, which is 24 x 60.

I had this problem today and thought I would mention the other simple method of getting the current time in a Google Docs spreadsheet is to enter CONTROL: in the cell. You can use this for both the Start and End Times cells.

If you need to enter the current date in a cell, then this is achieved by CONTROL;

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  • 1
    Thanks for sharing, but it isn't an answer to the question. Read more tour that in our help center. Welcome to Web Applications !! – Jacob Jan Tuinstra Nov 6 '13 at 6:13

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