How to get the difference in minutes between two dates in Microsoft Excel?

time and date are both stored as numerical, decimal values (floating point actually). Dates are the whole numbers and time is the decimal part (1/24 = 1 hour, 1/24*1/60 is one minute etc...)

Date-time difference is calculated as:

date2-date1

time2-time1

which will give you the answer in days, now multiply by 24 (hours in day) and then by 60 (minutes in hour) and you are there:

time elapsed = ((date2-date1) + (time2-time1)) * 24 * 60

or

C3 = ((A3-A2)+(B3-B2))*24*60

To add a bit more perspective, Excel stores date and times as serial numbers.

Here is a Reference material to read up.

I would suggest you to use the following:

Combine date to it's time and then do the difference. So it will not cause you any issues of next day or anything.

Please refer to the image with calculations. You may leave your total minutes cell as general or number format.

enter image description here

  • MS EXCEL Article: Calculate the difference between two times

  • Example as per this article