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:
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:
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.
23 Responses to “Learn Top 10 Excel Features”
What it looks like if excel without formula?? 🙂
It would be not excel it would just be fancy tables in which you could just use power point. (Chandoo) would Access be an alternative?
Awesome piece of work!!!
Great article.
Chandoo - my biggest interest in the article was the awesome word-graphic at the top - where did you go to get it done into a shape?
@Rich.. thank you. I used http://www.tagxedo.com/ to generate this word cloud. I took all the comments in the original post, pasted them in tagxedo website and set up the shape etc.
Awesome Chandoo.. You need always needs coffee to start up with. BTW , how did u created the Heart Shaped picture filled with High Repetitive text in it .. Please put it on your Next blog ...
Chandoo, good article. I’ve added a link to it from Connexion – our collection of the most useful and interesting spreadsheet-related articles from the web. See http://www.i-nth.com/resources/connexion
Hi,
Just one small question. Where the hell have been I in the past for not discovering this website sooner?
I've lost a job interview recently where even though I had the subject knowledge, I was not upto their mark in Excel.
Thank you for all the free tips, guidance and for creating this forum environment.
[PS: I've just been through the site for the 1st time, and have signed up for the newsletter. You can expect pretty stupid questions from me soon]
Hy Chandoo, you always inspire me with to explore something new in excel. This data structure table is only for excel 2007 or compatible to 2010. I recently installed latest excel version 2013 in my System and experience problems regarding operating according to previous one. I'm waiting your article relates to that excel version.
Thanks
Awesome article Mr. Chandoo and that is a awesome heart shaped pic you created. Great tips as well.
[...] Learn Top 10 Excel Features | Chandoo.org – Learn Microsoft Excel Online. [...]
Chandoo is awesome..
Thanks, i got better, And i always get 90.50 in my grade card but now i get 96.50 i improved because of the tutorials you gave, Thank You Very Much Chandoo Guy.
Hi chandoo, i am intersted in seeing the video or step by step done procedure of analysing the comments and presenting in the data percentage steps. I think this one would be first step in finding out how generally happens data calculation. Thank you.
As well i would like to know how to get that black shape art of your face which i see in chandoo. I am interested in making it for me.
Nice to see the features considered by Excel users to be most useful. It might be a good idea to also analyze StackOverflow Excel questions to see what keywords appear most often.
Here are my top 10 Excel Features (for advanced users):
http://www.analystcave.com/excel-10-top-excel-features/
Thanks a ton for this it totally helped with my homework ????
Very good effort
Thank you for this. Lots of learning in the links you've provided for this septuagenarian.
Pls send me new post
Dude, your humor ? ?
Loved your work.
Hello Sir,
I am Sanjeev Khakre and i from Indore City, India , I am your big follower and i have watch your videos and learnt a lots of excel trick or function and many more . thanks so much for all of your excellent support.
Your excel knowledge is real awesome.
Thanks
Sanjeev
Your work is excellent but pls willing to know more details about the features of microsoft excel
Chandoo Would Access be a better alternative than VB?