Calculate Elapsed Time in Excel [Quick Tips]

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Calculating elapsed time is very common whether you are managing a project or raising a baby. Elapsed time is nothing but interval between a starting point and the current point in time. We can use excel formulas to calculate elapsed time very easily.

Calculate Elapsed Time using Excel FormulasCalculating elapsed time in years

For all the examples in this post we assume the starting date and time from which we need to calculate elapsed time is in Cell A1.

To calculate the elapsed time in years, use the formula =(NOW()-A1)/365 [Help on NOW formula]

Elapsed time in months

To calculate the elapsed time in months, we can use the formula =(NOW()-A1)/30. This returns the value in 30 day months.

Elapsed time in weeks

To calculate the elapsed time in weeks, we use the formula =(NOW()-A1)/7

Elapsed time in days

To calculate elapsed time in days, the formula is simple =TODAY()-A1. [Help on TODAY formula]

The result includes fractions as well. You can use number formatting to remove the values after decimal point.

Elapsed time in working days

To calculate elapsed time in working days, we can use the NETWORKDAYS formula like this = NETWORKDAYS(A1, TODAY()). This formula assumes 5 working days per week starting with Monday. You can also add an optional list of holidays as a parameter to it.

But if your working week is not from Monday to Friday, you can try the NETWORKINGDAYS() UDF in the same way.

Elapsed time in hours

To calculate elapsed time in hours, we can use the formula =(NOW()-A1)*24

Elapsed time in minutes

To find out elapsed time in minutes, use the formula =(NOW()-A1)*24*60

Elapsed time in seconds

In some machine critical scenarios, you might want to find the elapsed time in seconds. Just use the formula =(NOW()-A1)*24*3600

Download the Elapsed Time Worksheet and see the examples

Click here to download the elapsed time worksheet and play with the examples.

More:

Tips on using date & time in excel, List of excel date & time formulas, More excel quick tips

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23 Responses to “Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA”

  1. sam says:

    Its possible to display up to 4 text values.

    Have a look at the screen shot of an example that I had posted way back at the EHA and figure out how its done !

    http://tinypic.com/r/muzywk/6

  2. ruve1k says:

    With Excel 2010 you can use Conditional Formatting to apply custom number formats which can display text. (In older versions you can only modify text color and cell background color, but not number formats.) Using CF allows for an even larger number of different display values.

  3. soumya says:

    Hey,
    Thanks, this helps. But how do you do it for multiple values where there is a huge amount of non repeating  text? 

  4. [...] Pivot Tables take tables of data and allow the user to summarise and consolidate the data at the same time. This is a great and very fast method of analysis but is restricted to handling mathematical functions on the value field resulting in numerical summaries. – read more [...]

  5. […] Read more here: Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA […]

  6. Jon Gali says:

    There is a very good way actually for handling text inside values area.
    First you create a special column on the very left side and call it ID, and put unique ID (numbers only), and then create a pivot table with:

    Row Labels and Column labels as you like, and in the Values labels use the unique ID number.

    Move the unique ID number (copy paste) somewhere to the right and use vlookup to load the data you need using the ID as reference.

    It is a bit longer way but for me it works perfectly to combine values as you like in any moment.

    hope helps.

    Regards,

    Jon

  7. Linda says:

    Thank you! I finally understand pivot tables thanks to your clear, concise explanations and examples.

  8. Danzi says:

    Good Day. This is exactly what i have been looking for. However when i try it on my pivot table or even when i try to recreate this exercise using the sample worksheet, i get this error:

    "Microsoft Excel cannot use the number format you typed. Try using one of the built-in number formats."

  9. Hiren says:

    pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
    NAME PAN AMOUNT
    MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
    MR.Y AAABR1258C
    MR.A CFVDE2458T
    MR.Z AAVCR12548C
    MR.X AAAAC1254T
    MR.Z AADCD245T

  10. Hiren says:

    pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
    NAME PAN AMOUNT
    MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
    MR.Y AAABR1258C 1000
    MR.A CFVDE2458T 2000
    MR.Z AAVCR12548C 5451
    MR.X AAAAC1254T 45564
    MR.Z AADCD245T 4500
    how to get pivot tabe so i get PAN no. against Name.

  11. Letitgo says:

    I found an easy way to get text values in pivot table.

    I create an other worksheet in wich each cell has a formula that copy the pivot table. The trick is that the formula does a lookup for the numbers in the pivot table.

    The formula looks like that:
    =IF(ISNUMBER(table!A1);VLOOKUP(table!A1;Code!$A$1:$B$65;2);IF(ISBLANK(table!A1);" ";table!A1))

    Code is a worksheet where there is a liste of text /numbers correspondance.

    As a bonus The new sheet is easier to format

    Additional trick:
    In my case, i encoded differents codeid with a power(2, codeId-1) so that summing then is equivalent to concatenate them.

    1-A
    2-B
    4-C
    8-D

    yields :

    5 - AC
    14 - BCD

  12. Tushar says:

    Hi
    I want to ask if pivot can display dates in pivot field. As in a column i have customers and in row different items i want to know there last purchase date. anyone help in this??

  13. Tushar says:

    Hello Guys, Need your help
    I am doing some analysis of the cycle time of the product i.e how much time a product takes from manufacturing to the central warehouse.
    I have batch numbers for the product and against them i have to pull out the diff. dates
    Like the base date is from where the manufacturing start. So i have the batch number,against it's manuf. date. Now i have to pull out the date when it was quality released.
    I have the quality released data but the data have duplicates, like i will have two dates or may be three for the same batch. So my main objective is to pull out the date which is latest among them.

    BATCH NO. DATE of Mfg. DATE of Quality release
    A1 12/4/2014 (HERE I HAVE TO PULL value)

    Next Sheet
    BATCH NO. DATE of Quality Release
    A1 14/5/2014
    a2 23/5/2016
    A1 12/5/2014
    A1 13/6/2014

    From this sheet i have to pull up the latest date format of date here is dd/mm/yyy

    TIA

  14. […] needed to present text instead of counts in a pivot table value column. Here is an excellent resource for Excel manipulation, in addition to an overview of pivot […]

  15. Kyrene says:

    This is great thank you.

  16. Rabiul says:

    Wow!!! Excellent!! It helped me a lot.

  17. I am developing training tracking sheet for 200 employees with training completed date. Each employee will be attending 25 courses. How to indicate actual dates in pivot table value field.

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