Add up Only minutes and seconds?

How can you enter and add up Only minutes and seconds? In Googling I found how to add Hours and minutes, and even days but that doesn’t really meet my needs.

What I have a number of handwritten time lists, in groups of 10-15 times each, in minute:second format. I can find only a Time format in Excel something like H:M:S and that’s more cumbersome than I want/need to just enter M:S.

So how can I simply enter columns of times as only M:S and then sum each column separately?

Thanks
.

I do not know of such a format in MS Office. I would do what you are trying to achieve manually. That is, if your files are in comma delimited format, then I would open each file with a text editor, and use to editor to Find & Replace. If you select Find ':' and Replace ',', then your minutes will be in separate column to the seconds. After which, you can convert the minutes column into seconds, and add this total to the seconds column.

Have you seen this? Calculate time in Excel: time difference, add, subtract and sum times

A quick glance at everything I'm assuming the format would be MM:SS in the cells.

iko22 said:

I do not know of such a format in MS Office. I would do what you are trying to achieve manually. That is, if your files are in comma delimited format, then I would open each file with a text editor, and use to editor to Find & Replace. If you select Find ':' and Replace ',', then your minutes will be in separate column to the seconds. After which, you can convert the minutes column into seconds, and add this total to the seconds column.

No files yet. I’m doing this for someone else who was just going to handwrite the lists. I’ll make sure they do it in a typed document. I did try out the Find and Replace inside Excel and it works like a champ. Thanks. That way I can make it easy for them to just use the number pad and a “.” instead of having to shift for a “:”.
.

F22 Simpilot said:

Have you seen this? Calculate time in Excel: time difference, add, subtract and sum times

A quick glance at everything I'm assuming the format would be MM:SS in the cells.

Thanks for the link. I hadn’t looked at that one prior, but it is the most detailed link I’ve seen.

I’ve played with Custom formats but have gotten none of them to work. For instance if I format “mm:ss” and type in “05:25”, I get “25:00”. Same for “m:ss” and “5:25”, I get 25:00. (25:00 !??)

Adding “[h]:” to the front doesn’t help as now I get 5 hours, 25 minutes, 00 seconds, unless I enter “00:05:25” but then I get exactly that: “00:05:25”.

However, with the “mm:ss” format, if I enter an hour such as “00:05:25” I will get just the mm:ss.

So I’m guessing it will take a combo of find/replace a “.” to a “:” and then concatenate “00:” in front of the replace result then convert (format) from text to “mm:ss”.

Unless there’s a better way…??
.

To do an easy search and replace, I use Notepad ++. Enter the list and hit shift + F. enter a : for find and a . for replace. May have to use regular expression. Same goes for 00. The search and replace is space sensitive. So spaces DO matter in your search and replace.