Hi - when you enter '3' in this case you are actually entering 3 days, as Excel sees it
As such, Excel actually see this value as midnight on 3 January 1900 (hence, still 0:00 when viewed as h:mm)
You could enter =TIME(3, 0, 0) to enter 3 hours, and this would show as 3:00
3 hours is not a real time, it's a time duration.
What do you enter for 3 minutes?
What would you enter for 3 hours and 3 minutes?
If you have consistency in the way you enter the hours and minutes, and are able to use macros,
you could make use of the worksheets' Change event to run code to manipulate your entry.
Pretty sure Microsoft and everybody using Excel won't be changing everything they have regarding date and time to accommodate your way of thinking.
But like I said, the Worksheet_Change Event can handle things any way you want.
No buttons necessary, happens as soon as you hit the enter key.