How to Add Minutes to Time in Excel (Formula)

There might be a situation when you need to add specific minutes to a time you already have in a cell in Excel. Imagine a work schedule where you need to add break times to your daily routine.

Your starting time is 8:00 AM, and you take a 15-minute break daily. To find out when you’ll be back from your break, you can add 15 minutes to your start time.

In Excel, time is stored as a fraction of a numeric value, so a complete day of 24 hours equals 1. This tutorial will teach us how to do this using a formula.

Adding Minutes to Time in Excel (Simple Addition Method)

Now think this way: there are (24*60) 1440 minutes daily. So, if you want to add one minute in a time value, that would be (1/1440). In the following example, you have the time 12:01 AM in cell A1.

=A1+(10/1440)

In cell B1, we added (1/1440) minutes to the value from cell A1 and got 12:02 AM. Now, let’s say you want to add a new more than one minute (ten minutes); in that case, you need to add (10/1440) in the time value. See the following example to understand.

As I said, in Excel, time is stored as a fraction of a numeric value, whereas a complete day (24 hours) is represented as 1.

This means each hour is 1/24, each minute is 1/1440 (since there are 1440 minutes in a day), and each second is 1/86400 (since there are 86400 seconds in a day).

Using the TIME Function to Add Time

You can also use the TIME function to add minutes to a time. This method has a benefit over the previous method: you don’t need to calculate the minutes.

The time function allows you to add minutes as a number in the argument, so if you want to add 15 minutes or 30 minutes, you can enter them into the function.

There are three arguments in the TIME function, and you need to specify the minutes’ values in the second argument.

=A1 + TIME(0,15,0)

Let’s take an example to understand.

You have time at 12:01 AM in cell A1. Using the time function, we have specified 15 minutes to add, and the result is 12:16 AM.

Other Examples for Add Minutes into Time

Here are more examples of how to write a formula to add minutes to a time value.

=MOD(A1 + TIME(0, 10, 0), 1)

The formula’s TIME(0, 10, 0) part creates a time value representing 10 minutes. When you add this to the time in A1, it effectively increases the time by 10 minutes.

MOD then ensures the result stays within the 24-hour range.

This is especially useful if adding minutes might push the time past midnight. Using MOD(…, 1), any time value greater than 24 hours will wrap around correctly, keeping the result within a single day’s time frame.

=TEXT(A1 + (10/1440), "h:mm AM/PM")

In the formula above, the (10/1440) part converts 10 minutes into a fraction of a day because there are 1440 minutes. Adding this fraction to the time in A1 increases the time by 10 minutes.

Next, the TEXT formats the result into a proper time format. The “h:mm AM/PM” part specifies the format, showing the hours and minutes along with the AM or PM.

So, if A1 is 12:01 AM, adding 10 minutes makes it 12:11 AM, and the TEXT ensures it is displayed clearly as “12:11 AM” in cell B1.

Dealing with Errors

Check that the time and the number of minutes you add are in the correct data type.

To check if time is in the proper format, you can use the TIMEVALUE and VALUE function to check if the minutes’ number is a numeric value

Subtract Minutes from Time in Excel

To subtract minutes from time values in Excel, you can use any of the formulas below.

These are the same formulas we used to add the minutes, but here, we have used the minus operator to deduct minutes instead of adding.

=A1 - (10/1440)
=A1 - TIME(0, 10, 0)
=MOD(A1 - TIME(0, 10, 0), 1)
=TEXT(A1 - (10/1440), "h:mm AM/PM")

Use VBA to Add or Deduct Minutes from Time

Instead of using built-in Excel functions, you can create a custom function to handle adding or subtracting minutes, including cases where the result might cross a day limit.

For a simple addition of the minutes in the time, you can write a formula like the following.

=AdjustTime(A1, 10)

And if A1 contains 11:00 PM and you want to subtract 70 minutes (resulting in a time before midnight), you would write:

=AdjustTime(A1, -10)

Function AdjustTime(StartTime As Date, Minutes As Double) As Date
    Dim TotalMinutes As Double
    TotalMinutes = (Hour(StartTime) * 60) + Minute(StartTime) + Minutes
    
    If TotalMinutes < 0 Then
        TotalMinutes = TotalMinutes + 1440 ' Add 24 hours worth of minutes if negative
    End If
    
    AdjustTime = (TotalMinutes / 1440) ' Convert back to Excel time format
End Function

Time Difference in Excel

In Excel, you can calculate time differences in minutes using formulas. If you have two-time values, say in A1 and B1, you can do this:

=(B1 - A1) * 1440

Handling Negative Time Differences

If you want to ensure that the formula handles time values where the end time is on the next day, you can use the following formula:

=IF(B1 >= A1, (B1 - A1) * 1440, (B1 + 1 - A1) * 1440)