Dashboards can be overwhelming with lots of details and context. A simple way to drag user’s attention to important stuff in the dashboard is to use alerts. See this example to understand what alerts mean.
How to display alerts in Excel Dashboards?
The easiest way to display alerts is to use Excel 2007’s Conditional Formatting feature – Icon sets.
[Excel 2007+]
Assuming you have a table in dashboard like above (data),
- Select the alert column and go to Conditional Formatting > Icon sets > 3 Traffic Lights (unrimmed)
- Now, go to Conditional Formatting > Edit Rules
- check “Icons in reverse order” and “Show icons only” buttons and you are done!
[Excel 2003]
- Add an extra column next to Alert column.
- Here type the formula
=IF(C1,CHAR(152),"")[assumes column C has alert data] - Select the column and set its font to “Wingdings 2” and color to Red. The Char code 152 is a big black circle in wingdings 2 font.
Do you use Alerts in Dashboards?
I think alerts add richness to dashboards and prompt users to take action. But too many alerts can be distracting. I have used alerts by showing red color dots or circles in dashboards to draw my manager’s attention to certain points.
What about you? Do you use alerts in dashboards? How do you automate them? What technique do you use? Share your ideas and tips using comments.
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 !