Cell formatting in Numbers

DavidO198 wrote:

As a test I opened a new numbers sheet and tried to calculate the difference between two dates and it returned a result in days that I was unable to format as a number.

Say, Date & Time 1 is in B2, and Date & Time 2 is in C2.

To get the number of days difference as a decimal number rather than a Duration you can simply use the close cousin of the DUR2HOURS function that Ian suggests for the other part of your question, something like this:

=DUR2DAYS(C2-B2).

In Numbers it can be easier to use the family of DUR2... functions than the DATEDIF function.

However if you will need to exchange documents with Excel users you may want to use DATEDIF, something like this:

=DATEDIF(B3,C3,"D")

Note that a "date" entered into Numbers always includes a time component too. If you don't supply a time then Numbers assumes the instant after midnight. Whether the time component is displayed or not depends on what you do in the Data Format dropdown in the Cell tab.

To learn more about the DUR2... functions, with lots of examples, you can go to Help > Formulas and Functions Help in your menu, or follow this link:

Formulas and Functions Help - Apple Support

SG

Hi David,

Thanks for your feedback and the green tick!

One thing to watch out for if you are using 2:00 as a duration. It could be confused as Date & Time (time of day).

2:00 am under the 24 hour clock shows 2:00 in a cell.

A duration of 2 hours can also display 2:00 with the style set to 0:00

I prefer this style to avoid ambiguity:

Regards,

Ian.

DavidO198 wrote:

I am trying to multiply two cells to get a product.

The first cell is formatted as hours:mins - a period of time

The second cells is formatted as a number - the number of times something occurs per hour

The product is the number of occurrences in the period of time.

Nope.

That’s what you would like the product to be. But I multiply a period of time (say 2 hours 30 minutes) by a number (say 3), the product is that duration times that number (7 hours 30 minutes).

As a test I opened a new numbers sheet and tried to calculate the difference between two dates

That is exactly what Numbers’ DATEDIF function does.

Hi David,

Convert the duration to a number of hours. The DUR2HRS function is your friend.

Formula in D2: DUR2HOURS(B2)×C2

Regards,

Ian.