Re: date/time-stamp function

[hala cse unsw edu au (Harald Richard Ashburner)]

J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) said:
> On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 11:38:45 -0400, Adam J. Henry wrote:
> > Hi.  I'm interested in using Gnumeric to record time spent on work
> > projects.  I'm looking for suggests to accomplish the following goals:
> >
> >      A way to find the difference in two date/time stamps.
>
> I'm not aware of a simple function for that, but you should be able to
> construct what you want using DATEDIF, DATE, TIME, YEAR, MONTH, HOUR and
> MINUTE.
>
> If you are primarily interested in the difference in days, you can just
> subtract the values from one another ("Serial Numbers in Gnumeric are
> represented as follows:The integral part is the number of days since the 1st
> of January of 1900.  The decimal part represent the fraction of the day and
> is mapped into hour, minutes and seconds.")
>
> >      A quick way to insert a date/time stamp.  This would mark the
> >      current date and time, but would not be changed every time I
> >      reload the spreadsheet (as with the NOW() function).
>
> * =NOW()
> * go back to the cell
> * CTRL-C
> * right-click, select Paste Special -> As Value -> OK.
Sorry for the lateness,
        I actually answered this, but my email address changed so it got held for moderation. (My laziness 
strikes again  - fixed now :)

        (Cut & paste from the original)

Ctrl + ; => inserts the current date in a cell
Ctrl + : => inserts the current time in a cell

(both as text)
        
you can subtract one time from another using = A2-A1 or whatever, then
it's just a question of making sure the result is the correct format.
Format->cells and choose something like [h]:mm:ss

Dates are stored as an integer being the number of days since January 1
1900

Time is stored as a fraction of a day. eg 0 is midnight, 0.5 midday,
0.75 is 6pm

both are displayed as dates, times or both date and time
by selecting
the correct format.

IIRC that is the same as Excel.

Right now, here the current date and time is
38250.3875...
or, formatted as m/dd/y h:mm
9/20/04 9:18

Hope that helps.



-- 
Kind regards,
Hal Ashburner