Working with recorded timed events in minutes and seconds

[Dr._C]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I am having a problem with being able to analyze mile run times in excel. The times are recorded in minutes and seconds (e.g. 8:56) but excel is reading this entry as 8:56 AM or time of day. I have tried changing the formatting but nothing seems to work. I have used the time format and the custom format options but for some reason excel continues to display the entry as time of day. Has anyone else had to work with times recorded in minutes and seconds?

I spent an hour on the phone with an SPSS tech this morning but they were unable help. When I transferred my data to SPSS the format was changed to decimals, which is not what I want. I basically need to be able to do descriptive stats on the mile run times. But excel doesn't recognize my entry as minutes and seconds.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

 

[CyberTaz]

"Time" in Excel means "time of day", not "amount of time".

Record your ETs as regular numerical values with decimal fractions, not as
Time Values:

Four minutes,15 seconds would be entered as 4.25 not as 4:15

 

[Laroche J]

CyberTaz wrote on 2009-06-01 16:56:

Four minutes,15 seconds would be entered as 4.25 not as 4:15

or as 0:4:15 (the first number is always the number of hours)

If your data is already in the spreadsheet, divide everything by 60.

JL
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Office v.X 10.1.9, Office 2008 trial