WEEKDAY function

The WEEKDAY function in Excel is a useful tool for finding the day of the week for a given date. It helps you determine whether a particular date falls on a weekday (Monday to Friday) and, if so, which day of the week it is. This function can be handy for various applications, such as scheduling, project management, and more.

Syntax

WEEKDAY(serial_number, [return_type])

Arguments

serial_numberThe date for which you want to find the day of the week.
[return_type](Optional) A number that specifies the type of result you want:
1 or omitted: Returns numbers 1 (Sunday) through 7 (Saturday).
2: Returns numbers 1 (Monday) through 7 (Sunday).
3: Returns numbers 0 (Monday) through 6 (Sunday).
11: Returns numbers 1 (Monday) through 7 (Sunday).
12: Returns numbers 1 (Tuesday) through 7 (Monday).

How to use

The WEEKDAY function is quite straightforward to use. You provide it with a date in the serial_number argument, and it returns the day of the week based on the specified [return_type] (which is optional). Here are some examples to illustrate how to use it:

This formula will return 5 because November 3, 2023, is a Friday (assuming the default return type of 1).

Using return type 2, this formula will return 6 because November 3, 2023, is a Friday, which is represented as 6 in this context.

With return type 11, this formula will also return 6, indicating that November 3, 2023, is a Friday.

Remember to input your date in the proper format (in quotation marks), and you can use this function to determine the day of the week for various dates.

Examples

Let’s explore some more examples of using the WEEKDAY function:

This will return 1 because November 6, 2023, is a Sunday.

Using return type 3, this formula will return 6 because November 6, 2023, is a Sunday, and it is represented as 6 in this context.

Additional Information

The WEEKDAY function is a valuable tool for date-related calculations in Excel. It helps you efficiently work with dates and identify the day of the week, which can be crucial for scheduling and data analysis. If you encounter any unfamiliar terms or need more details about date functions in Excel, you can refer to Microsoft Excel’s official documentation for further information.

Tomasz Decker is an Excel specialist, skilled in data analysis and financial modeling.