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How to calculate time difference between two times or dates?

Author Sun Last modified

If you have two lists of time, such column A and column B (the time in column A is earlier than column B in the same row), as shown as below screenshot, and you cannot get the right time different with later time subtracting the early one. So now, I talk about the methods to calculate time difference in Excel.

a screenshot showing the earlier time and later time in two columns
Calculate time difference between two times in Excel
Calculate time difference between two dates in Excel
Calculate time difference between two dates with Kutools for Excel

Calculate time difference between two times in Excel

In our case, we suppose there are only hours, minutes and seconds in two columns, and the time in column A is always earlier than Column B in the same row.

1. Select a blank cell, in this case, I select Cell C2, type this formula =B2-A2+(A2>B2) (the time in Cell A2 is earlier than the Cell B2, you can change them as you need), press Enter key and then drag the fill handle to fill the range needed to apply this formula. See screenshot:
a screenshot of the time differences calculated by formula

2. Select the result range, in this case select the result range C2:C6, and right click > Formats Cells in the context menu. See screenshot:
a screenshot of opening the Format Cells dialog box

3. In the Format Cells dialog, click Number tab > Time, and select the time format you need from the right section, click OK. See screenshot:
a screenshot of changing the cell format to Time

Then you can see the time difference has been calculated as shown below:
a screenshot of the final results

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Calculate time difference between two dates in Excel

If there are not only hours, minutes and seconds but also dates in the columns, you can do as follow:
a screenshot of the original datetime values in two columns

1. Select a blank cell, in this case, I select Cell C2, type this formula =B2-A2 (the time in Cell A2 is earlier than the Cell B2, you can change them as you need), press Enter key and then drag the fill handle to fill the range needed to apply this formula. See screenshot:
a screenshot of time difference between datetime values calculated by formula

2. Select the result range, in this case select the range C2:C6, and right click > Formats Cells in the context menu. See screenshot:
a screenshot of opening the Format Cells dialog box 2

3. In the Format Cells dialog, click Number tab > Time, and select 37:30:55 from the Type section, click OK. See screenshot:
a screenshot of changing the formula cells to Time format

Then you can see the time difference has been calculated as shown below:
a screenshot of the final results 2

Calculate time difference between two dates with Kutools for Excel

If you want to calculate time difference and display the calculated time difference as words (3 hours 5 munites 12 seconds), you can use the Date & Time helper utility of Kutools for Excel.

After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:

1. Select the a cell which will place the time difference, click Kutools > Formula Helper > Date & Time helper, see screenshot:
a screenshot of enabling the Date & Time helper of Kutools

2. In the popping dialog, check Difference checkbox, then choose two times into the Arguments input textboxes separately, choose one disply type as you need in the drop-down list of Output result type, see screeshot:
a screenshot of configuring the argument fields

3. Click OK, then the first result displayed, drag the auto fill handle over the cells to calculate all difference of times.
a screenshot of the first result a screenshot of all results after dragging the Fill Handle

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