Add Time in Excel

Excel lets you work with all types of numbers. One example is time. Let’s learn how to add time in Excel.

There are several ways to add time in Excel. Let’s look at two common cases with real-world examples.

How to Add Times in Excel (To Find Total Time)

Imagine you’re booked on two flights. One lasts four hours and ten minutes; the second lasts two hours and twenty minutes. You want to know how long you’ll be in the air.

Working in Excel, type your first flight time into a cell: 4:10. In an adjacent cell, type in your second: 2:20.

It’s worth noting that you can leave the cell formatted as General, which is Excel’s default. The app is smart enough to recognize times formatted like this, and be able to add them correctly.

In a third cell, click and type = to begin a formula. Then, click the first time, insert a + sign, then click on the second time.

Here, your formula is:

=A1+A2

Hit Enter on your keyboard, and Excel will return your total duration: 6:30.

 

How to Add Times (With Time Formatting)

Similar, but slightly different ways to add time are possible. Consider this. If you start a task at 4:00 PM, and it takes three hours to complete, what time will you be finished?

Begin by typing 4:00 PM into a cell. Excel will recognize this as a time value. In the cell below, type in your task duration, formatted as 3:00.

Repeat the steps from before, adding the two cells together. Here, your formula will be:

=C1+C2

Hit Enter again, and Excel gives you the time of completion: 7:00 PM. Notice that, once again, your result will be formatted with the PM characters already included.

As you can see, adding time takes only seconds in Excel.