Hiding Error Messages – Quick Tip

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Hello all

Chandoo has graciously, some may say stupidly, given me access to post on Chandoo.org.

I have been a reader of Chandoo.org for about 2 years and have spent most of my time contributing to the Forums where I have just posted my 950th post.

I have written a few small posts which Chandoo has used, and I wrote a major post on Monte Carlo Simulation and Data Tables:

http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/05/06/data-tables-monte-carlo-simulations-in-excel-a-comprehensive-guide/

Which was well recieved.

I will be starting to post about once per week and will be introducing a series of real life problems and how they can be tackled using Excel.

Hiding Error Messages

I like to leave certain error messages in place because they can show you what your data is doing, but they look horrible when you print out reports.

One way around this is to use functions like =Iserr or =Iserror to trap the error and display something else

Eg: A formula =A1/A2 will divide A1 by A2 and give you an answer,

but if A2 is 0 you will get a Divide Zero Error #DIV/0!

To fix that you can use the =IFERROR Function =IFERROR(A1/A2,0) which will now give you a zero if A2 is zero

But if you don’t mind seeing, or want to see, the errors on screen, but don’t want to print them out you can have Excel hide the error messages at Print time.

Page Setup - Sheet Options

How:

Goto the Page Setup menu
On the Sheet Tab use the Cell errors as:
and select <Blank>, “–“ or #N/A as appropriate

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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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