Hi

I run Excel 2K

I download various times from a mainframe. When the come down they look like
this:

1:53:00 AM

When I try a custom format to convert this to minutes I get the number 1 as
a result.

I use fortmat:cell:custom:m

But, if I enclose the "m" in square brackets ( [m] ) then it converts the
time to minutes which is what I want. I would like to know what the [ ]
brackets do?

Thanks