Situation
We know that VLOOKUP formula is useful to fetch the first matching item from a list. So what would you do if you need 2nd (or 3rd etc.) matching item from a list?
For eg. If you have below data, and you want to find out how much sales John made 2nd time, then VLOOKUP formula becomes quite useless. Or is it?!?
Data:
Solution
A simple solution to this problem would be sorting our data on sales person’s name. That way all Johns would line up one beneath another. And we just have to find the first John’s position and add 1 to it to get to 2nd occurrence. Like this =MATCH("John", C5:C17, 0) + 1
But sorting is not an option all the time. So there should be a better way to do this?
Well, there is. We just add a helper column before the sales person name and fill it with sales-person’s name & occurrence. (see the below data table).
For this we can use COUNTIF() Formula, like this: =C5&COUNTIF($C$5:C5,C5). Notice the $C$5:C5?, well the mix of absolute & relative references does the trick here and gets John1, John2… etc.
Now, to lookup 2nd occurance of John, all we do is, simply write =VLOOKUP("John2",...) and we are done.
Sample File
Download Example File – Getting the 2nd matching item from a list using VLOOKUP formula
The file includes few examples on how to fetch 2nd, 3rd etc. matches using lookup formulas. It also has some interesting (and challenging) home work for you. Download & play with it.
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13 Responses to “Convert fractional Excel time to hours & minutes [Quick tip]”
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...
This doesn't work for me. When applying the custom format of [h]:mm to 7.8 I get 187:12
Any ideas why?
@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!
Hi, sorry to point this out but Column C Header is misspelt 'Hours Palyed'
good one
So how do I go the other way and get hours and minutes to fractional time?
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.
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)
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
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
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)
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.
Thanks very much, extremely useful !