Excel: Add hours correctly

In order to correctly add hours and minutes in Excel, for example, for calculating your working time, you only need a small trick.

Add hours and minutes correctly in Excel

1. Click on the cell (as shown in the picture) in which you want the total hours to appear later.
2. Go to the "Format" button under the menu bar and then to "Format cell ...".
3. A new window opens (see screenshot). First select the "Number" tab in the category and then click on "User-defined" at the bottom left.
4. The default type is "0.00". In the »Type« line, change the format to "[hh]: mm" and confirm with "OK" (see green box in the screenshot). The result is summed up by the square brackets. Without this, only the time is displayed.

This practical tip relates to MS Excel 2010.