How to use the SECOND function in Microsoft Excel

Let's look at some Excel Second function examples and explore how to use the Second function as a worksheet function in Microsoft Excel:

Summary

The Microsoft Excel SECOND function returns the seconds (a number from 0 to 59) from a time value. For example, with a time of 10:15:20 PM, second will return 20. You can use the SECOND function to extract the second into a cell or feed the result into another formula, like the TIME function.
The SECOND function is a built-in function in Excel that is categorized as a Date/Time Function.

Purpose

Get the Second as a number (0-59) from a Time.

Return value

A number between 0 and 59.

What Does It Do ?

The function will show the second of the minute based upon a time or a number.
Only the fraction part of the number is used as it is this which relates to time of day.

Syntax

Second function has one syntax and hence they can be written in Three different ways:

=SECOND(Serial_number) or
=SECOND(“time”) or
=SECOND(cell reference)

Parameters or Arguments

Serial_number: The time value to extract the second from.
Time: The time of the second you are trying to find.
Cell reference: Reference to cells containing times.

Formatting

The result will be shown as a integer number between 0 and 59.

Usage notes

• Times can be supplied as text (e.g. "7:45 PM") or as decimal numbers (e.g. 0.5, which equals 12:00 PM).
• Excel stores date and times as a number. “22-Apr-2016 12:33:10 PM” will represent “42482.5230324074” as a serial number. To check that Excel is correctly recognizing a date or time, you can temporarily format the date as a number. Integer part represents date and decimal part represent time.
• You can directly insert time value into the function.

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