Format a time span as a number of days, hours and minutes

Question

This is purely an Excel sheet question.

I have a time span that is basically a difference between two cells, each containing a date:

I have managed to get the time difference in number of hours and minutes by changing the number format to [h]:mm. Now I would like to get the difference in number of days, hours and minutes. I tried to set the number format to [d]:[h]:[mm] but it is not accepted by Excel.

Here's what I have now:

    A                   B                   C (=A2-A1)
    ----------------    ----------------    ----------
1|  14/10/2011 00:00    17/10/2011 07:50    79:50
2|  14/10/2011 00:00    17/10/2011 11:00    83:00

Here's what I would like to get:

    A                   B                   C (=A2-A1)
    ----------------    ----------------    ----------
1|  14/10/2011 00:00    17/10/2011 07:50    3:7:50
2|  14/10/2011 00:00    17/10/2011 11:00    3:11:00

How can I do that? Is there a number format available for that?

Answer 1

You can use TEXT
=TEXT(B1-A1,"d:h:mm")

Note the same effect can be achieved using a simple number format on the cells directly

• select your range (cells C1, C2 etc)
• right click and Format Cells
• Custom
• Type d:hh:mm

If unlike your example data, your date differences exceed 31 days, then an approach such as =INT(B1-A1)&":"&TEXT(B1-A1,"h:mm")
will work