This tutorial demonstrates how to use the Excel WORKDAY Function in Excel to add business days.

WORKDAY Function Overview

The WORKDAY Function Returns the work day n number of working days (working days excludes weekends: Sat & Sun) from a start date. Optionally, you can exclude holidays. For custom weekends, use WORKDAY.INTL instead.

To use the WORKDAY Excel Worksheet Function, Select cell and Type:

(Notice how the formula input appear)

WORKDAY Function syntax and Inputs:

start_date – The start date in Excel serial number format or entered as a date with quotations (“s) surround the date. Example: You can not enter 11/12/2015 directly into the cell. Instead you need to enter “11/12/2015” or you would need to use the corresponding serial number: 42320. Alternatively, you can reference a cell with the date 11/12/2015 entered. Excel automatically converts dates stored in cells into serial format (unless the date is entered as text).

days – The number of non-weekend and non-holiday days from the start date.

holidays – OPTIONAL. An array with a list of dates representing holidays that should be excluded from workdays.

 

Find Nearest Workday

To find the nearest workday use the WORKDAY Function:

Find Nearest Workday to Today

To find the nearest workday to today use the TODAY Function with the WORKDAY Function:

Find Nearest WORKDAY in 10 Days

This example will find the nearest workday 10 days from the start date:

You can also use negative days to look for workdays in the past:

Workday with Holidays

By default, WORKDAYS will ignore all holidays. However you can use a 3rd optional argument to define a range of holidays:

WORKDAY in Google Sheets

The WORKDAY Function works exactly the same in Google Sheets as in Excel:

WORKDAY Examples in VBA

You can also use the WORKDAY function in VBA. Type:
Application.Worksheetfunction.Workday(start_date,days,holidays)

Executing the following VBA statements

will produce the following results

For the function arguments (start_date, etc.), you can either enter them directly into the function, or define variables to use instead.

Return to the List of all Functions in Excel