Handling date and time information

If you have limited spreadsheet experience, this introduction to how spreadsheets store dates and times will help you be more comfortable with handling date and time data in FullSpeed and using it in formulas.

How Spreadsheets Store Dates and Times

Spreadsheets—and many other computer programs—internally represent date and time information as a single number. The following number represents 7:50 am. on November 15, 2013:

 41593.327

The whole-number part (41593) represents the date, November 15, 2013, and the fractional part (.327) represents the time, 7:50 am.

A number like the one above is sometimes called a "datetime" value. The whole number part represents the number of days elapsed since January 1, 1900, which is why it can be described as a "1900 date system". By the way, the fractional part represents the fraction of a 24-hour day.

Probably the two most important things to know about dates and/or times stored this way are:

 If today is represented by 41593 and yesterday is represented by 41592, it's easy to see how you can calculate the number of days between two dates (41593 - 41592 = 1 day). Calculating the number of hours, minutes, and seconds between two times is just as easy.

 Here are differently-formatted representations of 41593.327:

Changing the format of a date/time number does not change the number, only the way it is displayed.