Adding minutes

[Helen]

I have a spreadsheet of the times (mins & secs) that it takes to make parts, but when I try to add these times up in comes up with an incorrect no.

For example:
0.63
1.83
0.42
0.17
=excel total = 3.05 yet the total in mins should be 5.03 (I think)

I have looked at formatting the cells as mm:ss - but it doesn't seem to work, and I don't understand it !!!

Please help.

[Anne Troy]

First, what is .63? If this is time, you should have it formatted as h:mm:ss

What do you want your total cell to look like? minutes and seconds or a number value?

[Helen]

Sorry, I didn't make that clear. 0.63 is mins (0) and secs (63), and I want the result to also be in mins & secs.

I just don't understand the formatting in mm:ss as I then try to type in 1.82 for example and it comes up with very strange figures instead of just putting the 1.82 into a min/sec format.

Thanks for your help

[Anne Troy]

You must enter seconds using a colon, not a decimal.

Format your cells as mm:ss.

Format your total cell as [m]:ss

Try that, let me know. Also see an excellent resource for explaining dates and times in Excel:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm