can Excel really deal with elapsed time?

[daudioguy]

While I can get Excel to format a cell with elapsed time (all I need it
0:00:00 to 2:59:59) I cannot get Excel to work with elapsed time. Excel
keeps lapsing into treating it as clock time.
When I type in 0:29:19 into a cell formatted as h:mm:ss it displays
0:29:19
so far so good.
But in the function editing box it shows
12:29:19 AM
and if I dbl click on the cell to edit it it transforms from 0:29:19 to
12:29:19 AM.
I don't want to think about these times are midnight and some offset I want
to treat them as they are, some number of seconds displayed as hours, minutes
and seconds. I want to enter them that way as well.
All this is for cataloging and organizing number from a timeline (video).
Is there some way of convincing Excel that I am dealing with elapsed time as
opposed to clock time?
thanks in advance

 

[David Biddulph]

Excel will do the calculations quite happily as it is. If you are dealing
with elapsed time, then you probably ought to format as [h]:mm:ss, rather
than h:mm:ss (so that it will display with times beyond 24 hours).
If you are particularly upset by what it is displaying in the formula bar,
change your windows regional preferences to 24 hour clock and that will get
rid of the AM/PM which is worrying you.