Working with Time Values in Cells

Whelandon

Hi all, perhaps someone can help me with a workaround. I have a sheet that captures time values in a column. As far as I know, Smartsheet doesn't recognize time or have any formulas more granular than "Date" formulas. My question is, does anyone know a way to convert time values into numeric values? For example, if the value in the cell is "1:30" (1 minute and 30 seconds), I want to use a formula to output "1.5" (one and a half minutes). This way I can run averages and graphs based on these time figures.

I tried using the RIGHT formula: =RIGHT(Time@row,2)/60 but this doesn't work because it's a text formula and the numbers that are output are being read as text. So with this formula, my formula would give me the isolated 30 that i'm looking for, but when I try to divide that by 60, I get an error because it thinks I'm trying to divide text by numbers.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Thanks,

Don

Paul Newcome

You are actually pretty close. Just wrap the RIGHT function in a VALUE function to convert it back to a number instead of text.

 

=VALUE(RIGHT(Time@row,2))/60

 

EDIT:

 

To convert the entire 1:30 into a decimal number, I would actually suggest something along the lines of...

 

=VALUE(LEFT(Time@row, FIND(":", Time@row) - 1) + VALUE(RIGHT(Time@row,2))/60

Whelandon

Brilliant. That's exactly what I was looking for. I didn't know about the value function. I also haven't used find before either, so thanks for putting all that together! This is a huge help.

Paul Newcome

Happy to help! 

 

Find is a great tool, and I use it in many different ways in many different applications.