The other day, I was building a spreadsheet to calculate FTE (full time equivalent) for staff based on hours worked on various days in a fortnight. While building the spreadsheet, I came across an interesting problem. Rounding Time to nearest minute. We can’t use ROUND() or MROUND() to round time as these formulas aren’t designed to work with time values. Although time values are technically decimal, rounding time to nearest minute (or quarter hour etc.) can be tricky when usual round formulas. Let me share a few formulas to round time to nearest point.

Let’s say you have a time value (either user input or calculated) in cell A1.
Use below formulas to round time in A1.
Nearest second: =TIME(HOUR(A1), MINUTE(A1), SECOND(A1)).
- SECOND formula rounds up any fractions and returns full seconds.
Nearest 15 seconds: =TIME(HOUR(A1), MINUTE(A1), MROUND(SECOND(A1),15))
- Use MROUND() to round up seconds values to nearest multiple of 15 (or whatever else)
Nearest Minute: =TIME(HOUR(A1), MINUTE(A1)+(SECOND(A1)>30),0)
- The seconds value will always be zero. We just look at fractional minutes portion to see if they are more then 30 to round up to next minute. The trick is to add up Boolean check (SECOND(A1)>30) to minutes value.
Nearest 15 minutes: =TIME(HOUR(A1), MROUND(MINUTE(A1)+SECOND(A1)/60,15),0)
- This one uses MROUND to round total mins (including fraction) to nearest multiple of 15.
Nearest 37th minute: =TIME(HOUR(A1), MROUND(MINUTE(A1)+SECOND(A1)/60,37),0)
- Same logic. Just to show you how to round to an arbitrary minute.
Nearest hour: =TIME(HOUR(A1) +((MINUTE(A1)+SECOND(A1)/60)>30),0,0)
- Check if total minutes is greater than 30 and add the result to hours.
Time for some home work
Let’s test your timing skills. Assuming A1 has date & time value (like 26-Jun-2017 7:21:32 AM), round it up to nearest working hour.
- The working hours are 9AM to 6PM on weekdays (Monday – Friday)
Post your answers in the comments section. Tick tock, tick tock… time is ticking, post your answers.
Time to polish your skills
Always having a hard time working with times in Excel? Its high time you took some time to learn about Excel time.
- Working with date & time values in Excel – a quick intro
- Convert fractional time to hours & minutes
- Highlighting over due items
- 42 tips for Excel time travelers – calculating past, present and future time values using formulas
- Sorting by birthday
- More date & time tips














22 Responses to “Master Excel 2007 Ribbon with this Free Learning Guide”
Thank you, kind sir. Well done with the baby making.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001@hotmail.com. never a response.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001_at_hotmail_dot_com. never a response for either attempt.
@Doug, it shows that your email address is pending verification. Can you check your inbox (and may be spam folder too) for an email from me? The subject will be "Activate Subscription to Get your Free Excel Tips E-book"
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Very Useful Info..Keep it up..
@Ajay.. you are welcome 🙂
how do u download microsoft excel for free?
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
Select Office
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I can't open this pdf. I get the error message:
You do not have the required license to open this file.
Please request a license from the creator of the file, and add it using the license manager and they try opening it again.
What gives??
I downloaded the file again and it worked this time. Strange. (First file was 116 KB, second was 1644 KB... ???)
[...] More ribbon goodness | Free e-book to learn Excel Ribbon [...]
Hi Chandoo,
thanks for sharing your Excel 2007 learning experience with us; unfortunately the link to the pdf of the free Excel 2007 learning guide seems broken: my Acrobate Readers flags: "Unkown file type or corrupte data".
Have a nice day
Michael
well done this is great
Can somebody just provide a link the classic TAB exportedUI files for MS Office 2003 for us to use in office 2007/2010?. searching online, everybody just wnats to make a buck online with silly Classic Tab installers which do nothing more than inport exportedUI files for you.
Don't give me a ribbon how to guide, just give me free exportedUI files. I should not have to pay anyone for this, it is free XML, MS should have included this to begin with.
thanks
Dear.
There are a set of debit values and a set ot credit values in a column. I want a vba code by whcich the debit value plus a single / multiple credit value is zero that needs to be marked .
finally i will come to know out of the avaibale debits which cannot be used the with avilable credits either single or multiple values.
If multiple matching sets are available let it take the 1st or the 2nd one its not an issue.
Column A Ref
-1000 A
-5000 B
-8000 C
800 A
100 A
100 A
2000 B
3000 B
13000
15000
hi...
how to make this add-ins and display in ribbon... check this sample : http://www.cprsoft.com/GCDemo01.htm
thank you sir...
Please tell me format painter short cut key In excel ?
Thanks In Advance
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