Subtracting time in Google sheets might sound simple but sometimes formatting can complicate things and leave you with an incorrect answer. In this article, we will help you get the time difference in the easiest way possible.
Do this by using =B2-A2 in cell C2 and pressing enter
Notice how the answer indicates 1:00:00 AM instead of showing one hour.
It’s important to check that there are no errors after you subtract time values. Row 8 indicates 12:35 instead of a 35 minute difference. We’ll fix this problem using formatting.
Say you wanted to subtract a certain amount of hours or minutes from a given time, the steps below will show you how to achieve this.
Here we will use time in 00:00:00 AM/PM formats
You can notice that Google will treat your values as time values by default and will affix AM or PM at the end.
Here we will use HH:MM:SS formatting to indicate how much hours, minutes and seconds we will be subtracting from our values. If you want to subtract one hour, 20 minutes and 32 seconds from our time value, type 1:20:32.
This will ensure that our values are treated as durations and not daytime values. Doing this will also allow you to subtract more than 24 hours without messing up the differences.
=A2-B2
We see that number formatting is key in subtracting time in Google Sheets. Now you can use this to achieve your needs for event planning or time data analysis. Click here to learn how to add time values.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like our article on how to subtract in Google Sheets or our article on how to subtract dates in Google Sheets.
If you want to learn how to link emails in Google Sheets, we also suggest checking out our detailed guide.
