Time recording with spreadsheet (Excel)
Thread poster: Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:48
German to English
+ ...
Dec 18, 2008

Following the thread about time-tracking software started by Mahmoud Rayyan, you may be interested in how to do this with a DIY spreadsheet. I use Excel 2000, and I suppose other spreadsheets make it similarly easy.
The important tricks are:
  • in a cell, pressing Ctrl+; (Control Semicolon) enters the current date
  • pressing Ctrl+Shift+: (Control Shift Colon) enters the current time of day (in the form of a number in the range 0 to 1).
I've been using this te
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Following the thread about time-tracking software started by Mahmoud Rayyan, you may be interested in how to do this with a DIY spreadsheet. I use Excel 2000, and I suppose other spreadsheets make it similarly easy.
The important tricks are:
  • in a cell, pressing Ctrl+; (Control Semicolon) enters the current date
  • pressing Ctrl+Shift+: (Control Shift Colon) enters the current time of day (in the form of a number in the range 0 to 1).
I've been using this technique since last year.
Example: In my sheet this evening (column headings in Bold face):
Date: Cell A97 contains the date ( Ctrl+; )
Start: Cell B97 is the time I started (21:54 when the cell format is "custom" hh:mm)
End: Cell C97 is the time I ended (23:03)
Duration: Cell D97 contains the formula =MAX(0,C97-B97), which displays as 01:09
(instead of simply C97-B97 to prevent accidental negatives).
Total: Cell E97 contains the formula =D97*24+E96 which displays as 103.37 . This is the total time spent so far on this job, in decimal hours. The term "*24" converts the day value in D97 iinto a number of hours. The first cell with a formula in this column (E3) is simply =D3*24 as it's the duration of my first session on this job.

Added on 19 Dec:
And, of course, the other cells in the Total column are not individually typed: I typed the formula =D4*24+E3 into cell E4 and the remainder of that column (E5, E6 etc) is obtained by using "Fill down" from the cell above.
For this particular job I have included further columns: one to enter the number of words translated in this session, and others to tell me my "mean" and "incremental" translation speed and an estimate of the hours required to complete the job. This is just to give you examples of what can be done fairly easily with a spreadsheet - I think that giving more details is probably not appropriate here.

I hope this interests somebody!

Oliver


[Edited at 2008-12-19 11:52 GMT]
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Vito Smolej
Vito Smolej
Germany
Local time: 18:48
Member (2004)
English to Slovenian
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SITE LOCALIZER
The alternative ... Dec 18, 2008

Oliver Walter wrote:

Following the thread about time-tracking software started by Mahmoud Rayyan, you may be interested in how to do this with a DIY spreadsheet. I use Excel 2000, and I suppose other spreadsheets make it similarly easy.


Huh?!

I use TimeStamp and Excel tricks are to me like water droplets pearling off teflon. I contributed 10€ (TimeStamp is shareware!) for charities and these 10€ is nothing compared to figure out what goes on with "important tricks", Pls note, I could go into depth and understand it etc etc, and of course yoz are welcome - but there's alternatives.

[Edited at 2008-12-18 23:56 GMT]


 
Sabine Deutsch
Sabine Deutsch  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 18:48
French to German
+ ...
I like it ! Dec 19, 2008

thank you, Oliver

 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 18:48
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
I don't like it...... Dec 19, 2008

....I LOVE IT!!!!

We enter today's date about 10 times every day, once for each job. The shortcuts are very welcome indeed! Thank you, thank you!!!


 


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Time recording with spreadsheet (Excel)






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