More than 3 Conditional Formats in Excel

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more-than-three-conditional-formats-excel-howtoOne of the most popular posts on this blog is how to become excel conditional formatting rock star. Quite a few commenters there asked me if there is a way to get more than 3 (or 4) conditional formats in excel 2003. Like what you see below:

You can get more than three conditional formats in excel using VBA / macros. Last week I had sometime to put together a simple VBA script using which you can get more than 3 conditional formats in Microsoft excel. Just follow the below 3 steps.

  1. Download the VBA Macro for getting more than 3 conditional formats
    Just copy the VBA Macro cFormat() to your workbook or place it in wherever you keep all your macros.
  2. In your workbook, define 3 named ranges.
    data2use: This range contains the cells to be formatted.
    conditions2use: This range is identical in shape and size to data2use and contains conditions for the data range start from 1 to n (n being the maximum number of conditional formats your would like to have)
    formats2use: This range contains “n” cells each formatted in a way you would like to format the cells in data2use range.

    See this illustration to understand how these 3 ranges are used to create more than 3 conditional formats:

    more-than-three-conditional-formats-excel-illustration

  3. Finally hit Alt+F8 (or menu > tools > macro > macros) and run the cFormat macro. The conditional formatting macro you have just downloaded will format the “data2use” range by scanning “conditions2use” range and using the formats in “formats2use” range. If you are curious to see how the VBA script looked like, see the cFormat macro code
  4. Make sure you have downloaded the workbook with code for getting more than 3 conditional formats in excel

What would you use this trick for? A giant heat map, project plan … ?

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13 Responses to “Convert fractional Excel time to hours & minutes [Quick tip]”

  1. Debraj Roy says:

    Hi Purna..

    Again a great tip.. Its a great way to convert Fractional Time..
    By the way.. Excel has two great and rarely used formula..

    =DOLLARFR(7.8,60) and =DOLLARDE(7.48,60)

    basically US Account person uses those to convert some currency denomination.. and we can use it to convert Year(i.e 3.11 Year = 3 year 11 month) and Week(6.5 week = 6 week 5 days), in the same manner...

  2. Jason says:

    This doesn't work for me. When applying the custom format of [h]:mm to 7.8 I get 187:12

    Any ideas why?

    • Hui... says:

      @Jason
      7.8 in Excel talk means 7.8 days
      =7.8*24
      =187.2 Hrs
      =187 Hrs 12 Mins

      If you follow Chandoo's instructions you will see that he divides the 7.8 by 24 to get it to a fraction of a day

      Simple, assuming the fractional time is in cell A1,

      Use below steps to convert it to hours & minutes:

      1. In the target cell, write =A1/24
      2. Select the target cell and press CTRL+1 to format it (you can also right click and select format cells)
      3. Select Custom from “Number” tab and enter the code [h]:mm
      4. Done!

  3. WhoKnows says:

    Hi, sorry to point this out but Column C Header is misspelt 'Hours Palyed'

  4. abhishek malik says:

    good one

  5. Julia says:

    So how do I go the other way and get hours and minutes to fractional time?

    • Chandoo says:

      If you have 7.5 in cell A1,

      - Use int(A1) to get the hours.
      - Use mod(A1,1)*60 to get minutes.

      If you have 7:30 (formatted as time) in A1

      - Use hours(a1) to get hours
      - Use minutes(a1) to get minutes.

      • Paula says:

        I had the same issue. You can solve it by changing the format as described above:

        Right click cell > Format Cells > (In Number tab) > Custom > Then enter the code [h]:mm
        ([hh]:mm and [hhh]:mm are nice too if you want to show leading zeros)

        • Jack Scarce says:

          Thanks guys, these are the tips I'm looking for.
          ...dividing the number of minutes elapsed by the percent change is my task - "int" is the key this time

  6. Srikanth says:

    It doesnt work for greater than 24 hours
    It returns 1:30 for 25.5 hours. It should have returned 25:30

    Ideally I would right function as
    =QUOTIENT(A1,1)&":"&MOD(A1,1)*60

    • Paula says:

      Sorry, replied to wrong comment....

      ----
      I had the same issue. You can solve it by changing the format as described above:

      Right click cell > Format Cells > (In Number tab) > Custom > Then enter the code [h]:mm
      ([hh]:mm and [hhh]:mm are nice too if you want to show leading zeros)

  7. Daniel says:

    Clever use of MOD here to extract the decimal part of a number. Divide a number containing a decimal by 1 and return the remainder. Humm. Very clever.

  8. Tomer says:

    Thanks very much, extremely useful !

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