How to add or subtract times to get hours/minutes/seconds in Excel?
In general, summing or subtracting time will get the time format such as hh:mm:ss, but in some cases, you just want to sum or subtract time to get hours or minutes or seconds only, how can you quickly handle it in Excel?
Sum or subtract times to get hours/minutes/seconds with formulas and Format Cell function
Sum or subtract times to get decimal hours/minutes/seconds with Kutools for Excel 
Sum or subtract times to get hours/minutes/seconds with formulas and Format Cell function
In Excel, you can add the times first and then format the cells to hours/minutes/seconds.
1. Select a blank cell and type =SUM(A2:B2), and then drag auto fill handle over the cells you need to apply this formula, see screenshot:
2. Then keep the summing cells selected, and right click to select Format Cells from the context menu.
3. Then in the Format Cells dialog, under Number tab, click Custom in the Category section, and then go to type [hh] into the Type textbox in right section. See screenshot:
4. Click OK, and now the summing results have been format as hours only.
Tip: If you want to format cells as minutes, type [mm] into Type textbox, and if you format cells as seconds, type [ss] into Type textbox.
Sum or subtract times to get decimal hours/minutes/seconds with Kutools for Excel
If you want to sum time and then get the results as decimal hours, minutes or seconds, you can use Kutools for Excel’s Convert Time function.
| Kutools for Excel, with more than 300 handy functions, makes your jobs more easier. |
1. Select a blank cell and type =SUM(A2:B2), and then drag the autofill handle over cells to sum up time. See screenshot:
2. Keep results selected, and click Kutools > Content > Convert Time, and select an option you need from the sub context menu. See screenshot:
Then you can see the cells are formatted to decimal hours, minutes or seconds.
Convert to decimal hours Convert to decimal minutes Convert to decimal seconds
Relative articles:
- How to remove time from date in Excel?
- How to calculate time difference between two times or dates?
- How to combine date and time into one cell in Excel?
- How to extract time or hour only from datetime in Excel?
Best Office Productivity Tools
Supercharge Your Excel Skills with Kutools for Excel, and Experience Efficiency Like Never Before. Kutools for Excel Offers Over 300 Advanced Features to Boost Productivity and Save Time. Click Here to Get The Feature You Need The Most...
Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier
- Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
- Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
- Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
