How to Build a Time with the TIME Function in Excel

Combine hour and minute numbers into real times with TIME, calculate end times, and turn total minutes into hours.

You will learn to

• Build a time from hour and minute numbers
• Add minutes with TIME’s overflow
• Convert a total of minutes into h:mm

How it works

TIME(hour, minute, second) returns a time value — a fraction of a day that Excel displays as a clock time. =TIME(9,15,0) is 9:15 AM, stored as 0.385. Use it when a system gives you hours and minutes as separate numbers.

TIME rolls over extra minutes: =TIME(10,85,0) is 11:25 AM. That makes it easy to add a duration in minutes to a start time, or to show a total number of minutes as hours and minutes with the h:mm format (TIME wraps after 24 hours).

=TIME(B2,C2,0)