Good evening,

I am working on Chute and Response times for Emergency Services units. In my excel sheet, the column is formatted to show a time difference in mm:ss, i.e. 01:58 which is what I need. When uploaded to SPSS, the variable changes to hh:mm:ss am, i.e. 12:01:58 am. Any help on how to change the format would be great.

I have tried going into variable view and changing it from string to date mm:ss but then it changes all the values to -

Thanks!

Peder

Do the data come into SPSS as a string type? Normally, time data would come in in a time or duration format. If it is string, the Excel format wasn't recognized or there are some values in the column that are inconsistent with that type, forcing SPSS to use the string type.

Good morning,

Yes the data came over as a string type. I double checked and removed the few bad data pieces to clean it up with the same result.

Peder

What is the format declared in Excel? If it is Time, it should come over to SPSS as a date/time variable with a time format. You might want to make sure that the whole column in Excel has that format

Afternoon Jon,

It is set as a CUSTOM mm:ss; It is a date diff between two times to establish our enroute and total response times. I'm a data novice.

If the times are nonnegative, try changing the format to Time

You sir are a genius. Thank you so much for your help! Exactly what I needed to do. Thanks again! Be safe and stay healthy!

Peder