While the integer represents day/date, the number after the decimal point represents time. When you enter date and time into a cell, they will be stored as a serial number consisting of an integer and a decimal number. In the Excel date system, time is stored like this: It is because the time values are represented as fractions of a number in Excel.

However, if the format of the result cell is set to General, you would get the results in fractions/decimals. As you can see, there are 5 hours of difference between A3 and B3. Where A3 is Start time and B3 is End Time. The easiest way to find the time difference is by subtracting the Start time from the End Time: =End Time - Start Timeįor example, to subtract time in A3 from time in B3, we can use the below formula: =B3-A3 You can calculate the time between two times or two cells with a simple subtraction. More than often, we need to calculate the time difference between two given times to find the elapsed time. Calculate Time Difference Between Two Times In this article, we will see several methods to subtract time and calculate the difference between dates and times in Excel. Since Excel stores dates and times as numbers, you can easily subtract using simple arithmetic formulas, TIME function, TEXT function, or TIMEVALUE function to calculate the time difference or elapsed time and more.

For example, if you want to find the time it took to complete a task, you can input both the start and end times of the task and subtract them to find the total elapsed time. Subtracting time from another time is helpful if you want to find the time difference between two times.

Microsoft excel subtraction formula