Excel current time auto update

This tutorial explains the basics and beyond of the Excel time format.

Microsoft Excel has a handful of time features and knowing them in depth can save you a lot of time.

To leverage powerful time functions, it helps to know how Excel stores times. In this article, you will find everything you need to know about formatting time in Excel:

Excel time format

If you have been following our Excel Date Format tutorial, you know that Microsoft Excel stores dates as sequential numbers beginning with January 1, 1900, which is stored as number 1.

As time is a portion of a day, times are stored as decimal fractions.

In Excel's internal system:

• 00:00:00 is stored as 0.0
• 23:59:59 is stored as 0.99999
• 06:00 AM is 0.25
• 12:00 PM is 0.5

When both date and time are entered in a cell, the value is stored as a decimal number comprised of an integer representing the date and a decimal portion representing the time.

For example, 1 June 2025 9:30 AM is stored as 45809.39583.

How to get a decimal number representing time in Excel

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how to enter time in excel

how to input time in excel