Excel SECOND Function

Using the Excel SECOND Function

Excel SECOND Function

Summary

The SECOND function in Excel is used to return the seconds from a provided time value. The values returned will be integers ranging from 0 to 59. This function is useful when you are trying to extract only the seconds from a time value. When Excel executes this function date and other time components are ignored.

Syntax

=SECOND (serial_number)

Syntax Breakdown

(serial_number)
The serial_number will be a time value that contains the seconds that you are trying to find. The time values may be entered as text strings (be sure to use quotation marks), decimal numbers, or as the output from another function or formula.

Excel SECOND Examples

Other Notes

Time Values as Decimals
Time values can be represented as a decimal number. An example would be 0.5 to represent 12:00 P.M. since 12:00 P.M. is half of one day.

Excel stores dates and times as serials numbers, which may cause you to occasionally want to verify that dates and times are being recognized correctly. This can be achieved by formatting the time as a number.

SECOND Decimal Time Values