How do I analyze data using time periods?

[Frankie]

Hi and thanks for your help. I am trying to analyze my results during
different time periods. My data comes in the form of day-date-time. I know
how to convert into seperate columns indicating day of the week, date, and I
use a decimal code for time.

EG, for Tuesday, 5/27 at 12:18pm, I seperate into columns for Tuesday, and
12.18. My challenge is that I then want to break these time frames into time
blocks...for example, 12.18 is lunchtime.

When I try to use VLOOKUP, it is not recognizing the referenced 12.18 column
and instead uses the whole numerical code for that time period. (I used this
24 hour decimal system because it was the only one I found that could be
recognized)

Some more examples, suppose I have 3 action points at 10.15am, 12:30pm and
2:15pm...I want to know how I can set up a column that will code each time
into Morning, Lunch, and Afternoon so I can analyze the results during these
different time periods.

Thank you very much for your help!
Frankie

 

[Fred Smith]

My first suggestion is to use regular Excel times. They would be much
simpler to manipulate, as Excel has lots of time functions.

Regardless, whether you use a number or a time, Vlookup will handle it. To
determine exactly what your problem is, we would need to know how you are
storing your times (ie, what does "whole numerical code for that time
period" mean?), and the format of your lookup table.

Based on the information provided, my bet is you need to set the fourth
parameter of Vlookup to True rather than False.

Regards,
Fred.