Long time PHD reader and mother of a lovely kid, Michelle, sent me a question in email that provoked me to write this post,
I was wondering how to tabulate large amount of information gathered through surveys. Where I work customers are constantly handed survey sheets in order for us to measure how the service -among other things- is being perceived. Now, to put all that info into a spreadsheet (plus charts) can be really tedious.
So far I manage to get the job done by assigning 1 to 4 values were 1 sucks and 4 is great and so there I go column after column (each column is one individual survey) filling my 1 to 4’s answers. I know there’s an easy version with VBA; problem is that I am a total ignorant in that area. Any suggestions?
Few ideas that would make consolidation easy:
- Make sure all the source files are in the same format: make a template that your colleagues can use to input the data every month. This way you can use 3D references to summarize the data.
- Create a user form so that your audience can enter information in that instead of directly entering it in spreadsheet.
- Find out if the survey or other type data collection can be fed to a database. This way, every month we can import the data using data connections.
- If we actually end up with sheets with different data formats, spend sometime and study the anomalies. Then you can develop a small macro or find-replace routine that would clean the data. [related: clean data using excel]
- Try to save the files as CSV and open them in a regular expression capable editor like Notepad++. Now match and clean up data.
- All else fails, get a strong cup of coffee, put on some music, roll your sleeves and start alt+tabbing.
But more than these ideas, I am interested to know how YOU solve this problem.
I think this is a very common problem. Since I have very little experience in the area of consolidating data from multiple sheets in to one, I couldn’t give her any real advise. So now I am turning to you.
- Do you use any add-ins or macros to consolidate data? What is your experience like, what would you recommend?
- What shortcuts, ideas and cool things you use when working on data from multiple sheets?
- How do you usually clean / normalize the data?
Please discuss.
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 !