Hi Brioan, hi Hylton

I believe he could write this value of time (normal hh:mm:ss) in the user-format hh.mmss.
--> 12hours 10min 33 seconds are shown as 12:10:33 respectively as 12.1033

You could define a column, a raw or a cell in this way. and all other works well like all time formulas in calc. But it is necessary to define this! I you write in common time format it's not necessary to define the format.

So you could also use speed = distance / time. both formated time cells will show the identical result in the formula cells..

Sincerely
Franz


Brian Barker schrieb:
At 13:50 24/03/2009 +0200, Hylton Conacher wrote:
Seriously though convert a time value to a valid decimal value and vice versa.

As I mentioned, time values entered the way Calc expects *are* decimal values (possibly fractions) - but in days. (And what I now see you actually want to do appears to be to convert to an *invalid* decimal value.)

Thanks for the assistance but there is something wrong.

Values I get from an old sharp EL-532 Scientific calculator, which I trust absolutely ...

No-one else can trust these unless you tell us what they are and what they are meant to represent!

... are different to the ones you give, and yet I cannot see how.

My values are entered so:

Distance(km)   Time(0.mmss)
 3.2                0.3407

Aaargh! What do you mean by "0.mmss"? Do you mean your figure to represent 34 minutes and 7 seconds? If so, this is not the fraction 0.3407 of anything, of course! It's not even 3407 of anything.

The calculated values are:

Speedkm/hr)       Min/km
 5.63                   0.1039 ie 10m 39s

Oh, dear: you really *do* mean that you want values expressed in a mixture of different units to be represented by a decimal fraction that bears little discernible relation to the actual values.

How can these values be achieved with Calc formulae?

Some observations:

o No-one could have remotely guessed the detail of what you were asking from your earlier request.

o If you really want to do this, you are going to have to spend some time creating complicated formulae to *mis*use the values in cells, interpreting them not as the numbers they are but in the odd way your calculator does. (Such formulae will have been built in to your calculator.) There are probably two ways of doing this: storing the values as either the decimal fractions which they appear to be or else as text strings with the same appearance. In either case, your calculation formulae will effectively have to strip the values into their components, calculate with those, and then reassemble the result to appear as you want it.

o The reason your calculator does it the way it does is not because this is in any way desirable, but simply because of the limitations of its display: I'm guessing that it can display values such as 0.1039 but not "10min 39s" or "10:39" or even "10 39". To borrow (and modify) a common mantra: this is not a feature of your calculator; it is a bug! Calc can easily display values in any of these formats, of course. What you are proposing to do is to make your much more flexible computer system behave as if it were limited in the same way as your calculator display. That might be an interesting academic exercise, but I'd counsel against it if you simply want to be able to derive and display actual values. Use the spreadsheet as a spreadsheet and rejoice in what it can do better than your calculator.

o You say that the answers you are getting are different, but you have changed your problem somewhat! If you enter 34 minutes and 7 seconds as 0:34:7 and then use the formula =3.2/(xx*24), you will see 5.63, as you hope. To calculate minutes per kilometre, use =xx/3.2 . This will show as 0.00740 - which is in days per kilometre. Format the result cell as MM:SS and you will see 10:40. (The actual value has 39.6875 seconds: you calculator does not appear to know how to round properly.)

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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