Here is a familiar scenario: You are building a dashboard. Naturally, it has a few worksheets – data, assumptions, calculations and output. As you make changes to input data, you constantly switch to calculations (or output) page to check if the numbers are calculating as desired. This back and forth is slows you down.
Use Watch Window to reduce development time.
What is Watch Window:
Watch Window allows you to monitor values in other worksheets. This is very useful when you are testing your calculations / model. As you make changes to the input values / assumptions, Watch Window instantly reports the output values. See below demo to understand how Watch Window helps you.
How to Set up Watches?
Simple. Follow below steps:
- Go to Formulas ribbon tab and activate Watch Window from Auditing area.
- Select the cell(s) you want to add as Watches and click on “Add Watch” button on Watch Window
- The Watch Window stays visible until you close it. Edit input values to see the results in Watch Window instantly.
Adding Watches for VBA
Of course, Watches are a feature in almost all programming editors. Naturally, VBE also supports Watches. To add a watch to a variable / expression, just select it, right click and add Watch from the context menu.
Once you add a watch, you can monitor the expression / variable values when your code breaks. Alternatively, you can also ask VBE to break the code whenever your watch value changes.
Do you use watches?
Whenever I am developing complex pieces of VBA code or a big workbooks, I rely on watches to cut down the developing / testing time. They are very useful, light weight and simple.
What about you? Do you use watches in Excel? Share your experience in the comments section.
More ways to debug your formulas / VBA code
Check out below tips to learn more about formula / VBA code debugging:
Formulas
- Use F9 key to debug formulas
- Understand and fix Excel formula errors
- Auditing Excel formulas – a practical guide
- Show all names & their references -spreadsheet auditing
- Optimization tips for Excel formulas
VBA Development
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 !