Totaling Hours in a Pivot Table Time Field

In your source data, you might record the amount of time that employees have spent working on projects. For example, Jim worked on Project A for 8 hours Monday, 8 hours Tuesday, 6 hours Wednesday and 3 hours Thursday, for a total of 25 hours.

In the pivot table, you want the total time per project, and Project A should show a total of 25 hours.

However, your pivot table shows 1:00 as the total, instead of 25:00.

This happens because the results are shown as time rather than total time. The first 24 hours are counted as one day, and the remaining hour is 1:00 AM of the second day. The 1:00 in the Project A Total represents the 1:00 AM time.

To see the total time, format the cells that contain total times with the custom number format [h]:mm, and they’ll total correctly.

To apply the custom format

  1. In the pivot table, right-click on the Sum of Hours field button
  2. Click on Field Settings
  3. Click the Number button
  4. In the Category list, click on Custom
  5. In the Type box, enter: [h]:mm
  6. Click OK, twice, to close the dialog boxes.
  7. The pivot table will now show the total time for hours worked on each project.

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For more information on pivot tables, see the PivotTable Topics on my Contextures web site.