Determine if calculation between 2 date time values is 72 Hours in excel

Question

In order to establish a flag against each record when the time difference is smaller than 72 hours, I'm comparing booked DateTime values between two appointments.

It is straightforward to determine the difference in hours using the formula: Setting the cell format to [h]:mm after entering =B1-=A1

To determine whether the calculated amount is less than or larger than 72 hours, I then attempted to utilize an IF statement in a separate column. 

=IF(C1<72:00:00,1,0)

This, and variations of it using double quotes, etc hasn't worked for me. I guess the problem is that the calculated value in column C is still in DateTime format. Can anyone please advise the correct syntax to make the IF statement work?

Answer 1

Actually, Excel is quite accommodating in this regard. The important thing to remember is that date, time, and differences are expressed in decimals, with the full piece representing the number of days and the decimal representing the fractional days (hours, minutes).

So - for your example - after doing the subtraction, you should flag that particular field with =C1 < 3 ==> TRUE (if less than 72 hours), FALSE (otherwise)