How to specific "minutes:seconds" in cell format

[man]

I would like to record some sport reocrd which need input as
3:56
4:02
3:20
3:43..........something like that

And I also need to use such data to draw the chart, but i got confuse how
the excel know 3:56 which is closed 4:02. What kind of function or format I
can use to do so?

Please advise. Thanks all.

 

[FSt1]

hi
i'm assuming that you are talking about minutes and seconds and the format
you want is mm:ss. otherwise it might be hh:mm . you will find both formats
in the custom section of the number format tab in the format cells dialog.
excel keeps time as a percent of a day and sees 3:56 (minutes and seconds)
as 0.002731481 of a day. 4:02 (minutes and seconds) is seen as 0.002800926 of
a day. the chart should be a problem for excel.
formating only changes the way it looks. underneith excel just sees things
different from us but displays it in a way we can understand.

regard
FSt1

 

[pshepard]

Hi man,

if your example represents minutes and seconds, then enter the time as
0:3:56
entering the time value with a preceding "0:", which is the hour place holder.

If you want to display only minutes and seconds, then you can custom format
the cell to display "mm:ss" - to set a custom format - right click on the
cell and select format cell, then select custom.