While the day part of the date would be represented by the whole number, the time part would be represented by the decimal.įor example, 44197.5 would represent 12:00 PM and 44197.25 would represent 09:00 AM Just like dates, even time values are stored as numbers in Excel. You can read more about subtracting dates in Excel here Subtract Time in Excel So you won’t be able to subtract dates with such a format For example, if you use, Excel won’t recognize it as a date and consider it a text string. Note: This formula would only work when you using a date that Excel recognizes as a valid date format. You can easily adjust this and get the values in numbers by going to the Home tab, and select General in the number format drop-down. This sometimes happens when Excel tries to be helpful and pick up the format from the adjacent column.
There is a possibility that Excel will give you the result in the date format instead of a number as shown above.