Workday Excel function

The Workday function in Excel allows you to determine the date of the next workday given weekends and public holidays.

Workday Excel Function

On the worksheet you can see a list of dates  and we want to work out when the next workday will be based on those dates. Activate the function wizard – it must be in Date and Time and find the WORKDAY Excel function. Click OK. The first thing you get asked is what is the Start_ date – we want to look at 1st Jan 09 so enter cell A9. The next option is “Days” – this is the number of non-weekend and non-holiday days before or after the Start_date.

So I am asking Excel from the 1st Jan (I am going to put a 1 in) – tell me what the next workday is. What is also quite useful and is optional is you can specify when the public holidays are. You will see a list of public holidays on the worksheet in Column I. Highlight them to show Excel where they are – you must put in absolute references because you are going to copy it down. So in Holidays insert $I$9:$I$11. When I say OK it immediately tells me that the first working day after the 1st Jan is the 2nd Jan and also tells  me it is a Friday. I can now copy it down for the whole month of January. When you now look it you’ll see for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Jan – the next working day is the 5th which is a Monday.  If you look at the 15th (a Thursday) Excel has identified this as a public holiday- so the next working day after the 14th (a Wednesday) is the 16th which is a Friday. So this function allows you to determine when the next workday will be.