You can use the following formula to calculate the difference between two times in seconds in Excel:
=(B2-A2)*86400
This particular formula calculates the difference (in seconds) between the times in cells B2 and A2.
By default, the formula B2-A2 would return the difference between cells B2 and A2 in terms of days.
Since there are 86,400 seconds in a day, we must multiply the result of B2-A2 by 86,400 to get the difference in terms of seconds instead of days.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: Calculate Difference Between Times in Seconds in Excel
Suppose we have the following two columns in Excel that show the start and end times for some events:
We can type the following formula into cell C2 to calculate the difference between the start and end time for the first row in terms of seconds:
=(B2-A2)*86400
We can then drag and fill this formula down to each remaining cell in column C:
The values in column C display the difference in seconds between the Start Time and End Time for each row.
For example:
- There are 1,140 seconds between 1/1/2022 12:15 PM and 1/1/2022 12:34 PM.
- There are 18,120 seconds between 1/3/2022 4:13 AM and 1/3/2022 9:15 AM.
- There are 6,480 seconds between 1/15/2022 10:56 AM and 1/15/2022 12:44 PM.
And so on.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Excel:
How to Calculate Average Time in Excel
How to Plot Time Over Multiple Days in Excel
How to Add & Subtract Hours from Time in Excel
