Question

I should start by saying that I know no VBA

I have to enter a lot of time values in excel. Because it really slows me down entering a colon whilst typing, I thought I would write a macro that would allow me to enter a string like “18.10” and convert it to “18:10”. (Then I could just use the numpad and enter the times quickly).

I have cobbled together the function to convert any given (delimited) string into a time – that was easy. But now I am having trouble with my event handler because I cannot get at the exact text that I enter because Excel appears to be treating it as a number and trimming trailing 0s.

E.g. 18.10 gets converted to 18.1 – which gets converted to 18:01 (and not 18:10 as I want it to).

Here is my change handling code (copied from the interweb)

    Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Excel.Range)
Dim TimeStr As String

' This code copied from Chip Pearson
'http://www.cpearson.com/excel/DateTimeEntry.htm
If Application.Intersect(Target, Range("C6:F1000")) Is Nothing Then
    Exit Sub
End If
If Target.Cells.Count > 1 Then
    Exit Sub
End If
If Target.Value = "" Then
    Exit Sub
End If


Application.EnableEvents = False
With Target
    TimeStr = .Text  ' What should I use here????
    If .HasFormula = False Then
        .Value = ConvertToTime(TimeStr)
    End If
End With
Application.EnableEvents = True
Exit Sub

EndMacro:
MsgBox “You did not enter a valid time”
Application.EnableEvents = True
End Sub

As you can see I am currently using Text – I have looked at all the properties on Target in the debugger and could not find any that looked like it was the raw entered text. Is there a way to get at the value?

Any help greatly appreciated.

---

Thank you Issun and Craig. Issun is correct – I am making it overly complicated (w.r.t. to conversion to time). Here is what I have come up with and works rather well.

' This requires the format of the cells to ce "0.00" to prevent trailing 0s being trimmed
Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Excel.Range)
On Error GoTo ErrHandler:

Dim TimeStr As String
Dim TimeVal
' I am only entering times in this range
If Application.Intersect(Target, Range("C6:F1000")) Is Nothing Then
    Exit Sub
End If
If Target.Cells.Count > 1 Then
    Exit Sub
End If
If Target.Value = "" Then
    Exit Sub
End If

TimeStr = Replace(Target.Text, ".", ":")
TimeVal = TimeValue(TimeStr)
Application.EnableEvents = False
Target.Value = TimeVal
Target.NumberFormat = "h:mm"
Application.EnableEvents = True

Exit Sub
ErrHandler:
Exit Sub
End Sub

---

Sub SetTimeFormat()
    Selection.NumberFormat = "h:mm"
End Sub

Sub SetNumFormat()
    Selection.NumberFormat = "0.00"
End Sub

As mentioned in the comment, I found changing the cell format to “0.00” works well. Times entered as “18.1” get converted to “18:10” (instead of 18:01) but actually that is ok by me.

The last 2 macros I assign to a couple of hot keys so that if I do make a mistake, I can quickly convert the cell’s format back to numeric and end the value again.

Answer 1

If you change the format of the cell to text (Format Cells -> Text), this will keep the 18.10 and allow you to parse the value easier.

Edit: When you run your macro add a line similar to:

Selection.NumberFormat = "h:mm AM/PM"

This should then reformat the cells a “time” format.