How to work in hours?

Question

Any help with this would be appreciated, as I've spent a bit of time on my timesheet project already.
I can't figure out how to get Numbers to work in hours - like the employee timesheet template that's included. I've put pop up menus in the cells, e.g. from 6.00 AM to 9.00 AM in 10 minute increments.
So, B4 (time in from pop up), C4 (time out from pop up), D4 (ditto B4), E4 (ditto C4), and I'm hoping to get a total hours to fill cell H4.
I've tried duration but obviously I'm not doing something right!
I tried looking at the template formula but it's complicated and automatically deducts an hour for lunch etc.
Thanks, I hope you can help.

Answer 1

Hi J-C,
Having read your second post, I'm going back to square 1 on this.
I've put pop up menus in the cells, e.g. from 6.00 AM to 9.00 AM in 10 minute increments.
So, B4 (time in from pop up), C4 (time out from pop up), D4 (ditto B4), E4 (ditto C4), and I'm hoping to get a total hours to fill cell H4.
I've tried duration but obviously I'm not doing something right!
I tried looking at the template formula but it's complicated and automatically deducts an hour for lunch etc.
Here's the template formula, from C9:
=IF(OR(C7="",C8=""),"",IFERROR(C8-C7-Administration Information :: $B$1,""))
This revision gets rid of the part deducting an hour for lunch:
=IF(OR(C7="",C8=""),"",IFERROR(C8-C7,""))
The basic formula is an IF(condition,do-if-true,do-if-false) statement.
The condition, OR(C7="",C8=""), is TRUE if either C7 OR C8 contains the empty string ( "" ), which is the default (blank) value for all the in and out time pop-ups on the table. Unfortunately, the only way for a normal User to make a popup containing that default value is to copy one that Apple has provided, paste it into place, then edit the non-'blank' choices to fit the current requirements while making NO changes to the 'blank' value.
The closest we can come using a popup that we construct from scratch is to use a single space character in the 'blank' first item in the popup list, and revise the formula to fit:
=IF(OR(C7=" ",C8=" "),"",IFERROR(C8-C7,""))
(Note the space between each pair of quotes in the OR part of the formula.
The do-if-true part places the empty string into C9 if either C8 or C7 are 'blank'.
If both C7 and C8 contain values, the OR part is FALSE, and the do-if-false part is called:
IFERROR(C8-C7,"")
This part subtracts what's in C7 (a Date and Time value consisting of the time of day shown in C7 and the date on which that list entry was added to the popup list in the cell) from what's in C8 (same description as C7), returning the result as a Duration.
Cell C25 contains:
=SUM(C6,C9,C12,C15,C18,C21,C24)
which adds the Duration values in C6,C9,C12,C15,C18,C21,and C24
And returns the result as a duration formatted to show hours and minutes.
Text values (such as the empty string) in the cells are ignored, but the formula will choke on a numerical value in any of the cells in the list, and will return an error message, most likely "Values being summed by SUM must be either all durations or all numbers, unless one value is a date."
Using the above, and assuming that the user Always enters the first time IN in B4 and the first time OUT in C4, then uses D4 and E4 for the second IN and OUT if necessary, your formula in H4 could be:
=IF(OR(B4=" ",C4=" "),"",IFERROR((C4-B4)+(E4-D4)),""))
With the result formatted as Duration, with units Hours and Minutes specified using the slider in the Cell Format Inspector.
Regards,
Barry