WORKDAY

What does the WORKDAY function do?

The WORKDAY function in Excel is used to calculate the date that occurs a specified number of working days from a given start date. It takes into account weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and, if needed, holidays.

This is especially useful in project management, accounting, and logistics where it’s important to consider only working days without weekends.

Syntax

=WORKDAY(start_date, days, [holidays])

• start_date — date from which to start counting.
• days — number of working days to shift. Can be negative — then Excel looks for a date in the past.
• [holidays] — optional range of dates that are considered non-working. If not specified, the function only skips weekends (Sat and Sun).

Usage examples

=WORKDAY(A1, 10)

Returns the date that will occur 10 working days after the date in cell A1 (weekends excluded).

=WORKDAY(TODAY(), -5)

Determines the date that was 5 working days ago from the current date.

=WORKDAY(A1, 7, C1:C3)

Also excludes holidays specified in the range C1:C3 from the calculation.

Other date and time functions in Excel

TIMEVALUE, TIME, YEAR, DATE, DATEVALUE, EDATE, DAY, WEEKDAY, YEARFRAC, EOMONTH, MONTH, MINUTE, WEEKNUM, DATEDIF, TODAY, SECOND, NOW, HOUR, NETWORKDAYS

This post is also available in RU.