How to Calculate Working Hours Between 2 Dates [Solution]

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This post builds on earlier discussion, How many hours did Johnny work? I recommend you to read that post too.

Lets say you have 2 dates (with time) in cells A1 and A2 indicating starting and ending timestamps of an activity. And you want to calculate how many workings hours the task took. Further, lets assume,

  • Start date is in A1 and End date is in A2
  • Work day starts at 9 AM and ends at 6PM
  • and weekends are holidays

Now, if you were to calculate total number of working hours between 2 given dates, the first step would be to understand the problem thru, lets say a diagram like this:

Working hours between 2 dates - how to write a formula

We would write a formula like this:

=(18/24-MOD(A1,1)+MOD(A2,1)-9/24)*24 + (NETWORKDAYS(A1,A2)-2)*9

See the above illustration to understand this formula.

Now, while this formula is not terribly long or ineffective, it does feel complicated.

May be we can solve the problem in a different way?!?

Michael left an interesting answer to my initial question, how many hours did Johnny work?

Pedro took the formula further with his comment.

The approach behind their formulas is simple and truly out of box.

Instead of calculating how many hours are worked, we try to calculate how many hours are not worked and then subtract this from the total working hours. Simple!

See this illustration:

Working hours between 2 dates - a better formula

So the formula becomes:

Total working hours between 2 dates – (hours not worked on starting day + hours not worked on ending day)

=NETWORKDAYS(A1,A2)*9 - (MOD(A1,1)-9/24 + 18/24 -MOD(A2,1))*24

After simplification, the formula becomes,

=NETWORKDAYS(A1,A2)*9 - (MOD(A1,1) -MOD(A2,1))*24 -9

=(NETWORKDAYS(A1,A2)-1)*9 +(MOD(A2,1)-MOD(A1,1))*24

Sixseven also posted an equally elegant formula that uses TIME function instead of MOD()

=(NETWORKDAYS(B3,C3)*9) - ((TIME(HOUR(B3),MINUTE(B3),SECOND(B3))-TIME(9,0,0))*24) - ((TIME(18,0,0)-TIME(HOUR(C3),MINUTE(C3),SECOND(C3)))*24)

Download the solution Workbook and play with it

Click here to download the solution workbook and use it to understand the formulas better.

Thanks to Pedro & Michael & Sixseven & All of you

If someone asks me what is the most valuable part of this site, I would proudly say, “the comments”. Every day, we get tens of insightful comments from around the world teaching us various important techniques, tricks and ideas.

Case in point: the comments by Michael, Pedro and Sixseven on the “how many hours…” post taught me how to think out of box to solve a tricky problem like this with an elegant, simple formula. Thank you very much Michael, Pedro, Sixseven and each and every one of you who comment. 🙂

Have a great weekend everyone.

PS: This weekend is my mom’s birthday, plus it is a minor festival in India. So I am going to eat sumptuously, party vigorously and relax carelessly. Next week is going to be big with launch of excel school 3.

PPS: While at it, you may want to sign up for excel school already. The free lesson offer will vanish on Wednesday.

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21 Responses to “How to Filter Odd or Even Rows only? [Quick Tips]”

  1. Vijay says:

    Infact, instead of using =ISEVEN(B3), how about to use =ISEVEN(ROW())

    So it takes away any chance of wrong referencing.

  2. Hui... says:

    I like Daily Dose of Excel

  3. vimal says:

    I like it.

  4. Luke M says:

    Just a heads up, you do need to have the Analysis ToolPak add-in activated to use the ISEVEN / ISODD functions. An alternative to ISEVEN would be:
    =MOD(ROW(),2)=0

  5. Debbi says:

    rather than use a formula, couldn't you enter "true" in first cell and "false" in the second and drag it down and than filter on true or false.

  6. Paul S says:

    Just for clarification, is Ashish looking to filter by even or odd Characters or rows?

  7. Fred says:

    so many functions to learn!

  8. Istiyak says:

    Nice support by chandoo and team as a helpdesk. Give us more to learn and make us awesome. Always be helpful.......

  9. Arps says:

    In case you want to delete instead of filter,

    IF your data is in Sheet1 column A
    Put this in Sheet2 column A and drag down
    =OFFSET(Sheet1!A$1,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)
    (This is to delete even rows)

    To delete odd rows :
    =OFFSET(Sheet1!A$2,(ROWS($1:1)-1)*2,,)

  10. Pippa says:

    If your numbered cells did not correspond to rows, the answer would be even simpler:
    =MOD([cell address],2), then filter by 0 to see evens or 1 to see odds.

  11. Matthew D. Healy says:

    I sometimes do this using an even simpler method. I add a new column called "Sign" and put the value of 1 in the first row, say cell C2 if C1 contains the header. Then in C3 I put the formula =-1 * C2, which I copy and paste into the rest of the rows (so C4 has =-1 * C3 and so forth). Now I can just apply a filter and pick either +1 or -1 to see half the rows.

    Another way, which works if I want three possibilities: in C2 I put the value 1, in C3 I put the value 2, in C4 I put the value 3, then in C5 I put the formula =C2 then I copy C5 and paste into all the remaining rows (so C6 gets =C3, C7 gets =C4, etc.). Now I can apply a filter and pick the value 1, 2, or 3 to see a third of the rows.

    Extending this approach to more than 3 cases is left as an exercise for the reader.

  12. Paulo says:

    Another way =MOD(ROW();2). In this case, must to choose betwen 1 and 0.

  13. Makhan Butt says:

    very different style Odd or Even Rows very easy way to visit this site

    http://www.handycss.com/tips/odd-or-even-rows/

  14. Terhile says:

    Thanks for the tip, it worked like magic, saved having to delete row by row in my database.

  15. majid says:

    Thankssssssssssssssss

  16. Bhanu says:

    Hi Chandoo- First of all thanks for the trick. It helped me a lot. Here I have one more challenge. Having filtered the data based on odd. I want to paste data in another sheet adjacent to it. How can I do that?
    For Example-
    A 1 odd
    B 3 odd
    C 4 even
    D 6 even
    I have fileted the above data for odd and want to copy the "This is odd number" text in adjacent/next sheet here. How can I do that. After doing this my data should look like this
    A 1 odd This is odd number
    B 3 odd This is odd number
    C 4 even
    D 6 even

  17. Adriana says:

    Hi! Could you please help me find a formula to filter by language?
    Thank you!

  18. avinash says:

    Chandoo SIR,

    I HAVE A DATA IN EXCEL ROWS LIKE BELOW IS THERE ANY FORMULA OR A WAY WHERE I CAN INSTRUCT I CAN MAKE CHANGES , MEANS I WANT TO WRITE ONLY , THE FIG IS FRESH, BUT IN BELOW ROW IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY TAKE THE SOME WORDS FROM FIGS AND MAKE IN PLURAL FORM , WHILE USING '' ARE'' LIKE BELOW

    The fig is fresh - row 1
    Figs are fresh - row 2
    The Pomegranate is red - row 3
    Pomegranates are red - row 4

  19. Arshad Hussain Shah says:

    =IF(EVEN(A1)=A1,"EVEN - do something","ODD - do something else") with iferron (for blank Cell)

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