Transcript
In this lesson, we'll look at how to enter times in Excel.
As with dates, the key to entering a time in Excel is to enter it in a format that Excel will recognize as a time. When checking for a time, Excel will look for hours, minutes, seconds, and the AM or PM designation.
Let's take a look.
You can, of course, enter a time with all components. For example, 7:00 PM can be entered like this: 7:00:00 PM
And 8:30 AM like this: 8:30:00 AM
However, Excel can understand the date in progressively shorter formats.
For example, we can enter the time without seconds: 7:00 PM
We can enter the time without minutes: 7 AM
We can even enter the time with AM/PM abbreviated: 7 p
We can also enter the time in military format, so that we don't need to add AM or PM: 19:00
In each case, when we check the times in the formula bar, we can see that Excel is tracking a fully formed time. We can then cleanly format these times in any way we like.
Finally, you should know that you can also enter a date and time together, and Excel will store the time along with the date.
