Lets say you are the head of purchasing department at Big Corp Co.
You are obviously very busy. Every day starting with a large cup of coffee and ends with a big smile, as you save your company thousands of $s by negotiating best deals, finding best providers and being awesome.
Today, let me share a small Excel tip with you that will make you even more awesome.
Finding a provider with lowest value:
Lets say you are looking at a table like below and want to find-out lowest priced providers for each service.
To find providers with lowest value:
- Find the least amount for each service. Assuming the services are in the range C5:G5, use =MIN(C5:G5) to get this.
- Give a name to list of providers. I call mine as providers
- Using INDEX, MATCH formulas find the provider name with lowest amount. Like this:
=INDEX(providers, MATCH(minimum_value, C5:G5, 0)) - Bingo. You have the answer.
Bonus tip #1: Highlighting lowest values.
If you just want to highlight the lowest values, use conditional formatting.
- Select first row of numbers.
- Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Top / Bottom rules > Bottom 10 items
- Set to Bottom 1 and specify formatting as you want.
- Using format painter, copy the conditional formatting, one row at a time.
- Done!
Bonus tip #2: Handling Ties
Often 2 or more providers will tie for the bottom spot. What then?
One way to handle the ties is to show the word ties when 2 or more names have lowest value. To do this, use this formula instead.
=IF(COUNTIF(C5:G5, minimum_value)>1,"Ties", INDEX(providers,MATCH(minimum_value,C5:G5,0)))
A formula challenge for you…
Now that you know how to find the lowest value, here is a challenge for you.
- How do you write a formula to find which provider has maximum lowest values. In this example, the name we are looking for is TATA as they have 3 lowest values.
Want to find more… look here:
If you want to find more Excel formula tips and techniques, look no further. Start your journey with this and see how deep your formulas can nest.
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....
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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 !