HELP--Formatting cells for non-date time

[Luke]

All I want to do is keep track of time in terms of raw
hours and minutes. I don't care anything about the date.
However, whenever I format the cell to hh:mm or [hh]:mm
the value shows up as a date in the data entry space at
the top of the worksheet. I input 56:00 and the field
reads 1/2/1900 8:00 AM. All I want is 56:00. What is the
deal with this? There are supposedly formats for that
under the cell format options but that's not what I want.
I only want hours. I'm keeping track of different
processes that take a variety of hours and minutes. I
don't have any care for what the date is, plus the date
shown is absolutely wrong.

PLEASE HELP!!!

Thanks.

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi
I doubt you can do anything against this. Excel stores time/dates as
numer. 1 representing 24 hours or one day. So if you have a value of 48
hours Excel displays this in the formula bar as the date which is
represented by 2 (that is 1/2/1900).

But for your calculation this should be no problem. Excel will
calculate your values correctly

 

[LUKEH]

Thanks Frank. I sort of figured that was going to be the answer. It'
very annoying that they suggest that there is the possibility o
formatting without dates by offering the various types of cell forma
options but it's still all based on dates

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

Where do they suggest that?
The cells are formatted for time, it's just the formula bar,
if you don't like that you can remove it