Sometimes you need to know what day is the order of the week for your calculations, the WEEKDAY function in Excel is a calculation function that can help and help you do this. Let’s find out about the WEEKDAY function in Excel through the tips below.
Syntax: =WEEKDAY(serial_number,[return_type])
The WEEKDAY function syntax has the following arguments:
- Serial_number (required argument) – This is a sequential number representing the date of the day that we are trying to find.
- Return_type (optional argument) – This specifies which integers are to be assigned to each weekday. Possible values are:
WEEKDAY accepts a date and returns a number between 1-7 representing the day of week for that date. By default, WEEKDAY returns 1 for Sunday and 7 for Saturday, as shown in the table below:
| Result | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | Sunday |
| 2 | Monday |
| 3 | Tuesday |
| 4 | Wednesday |
| 5 | Thursday |
| 6 | Friday |
| 7 | Saturday |
WEEKDAY supports several numbering schemes. The return type argument determines which scheme used to map each day of week to a number. The return type is optional and defaults to 1. The table below shows the result and mapping associated with each return type:
| Return type | Numeric result | Day mapping |
|---|---|---|
| none | 1-7 | Sunday-Saturday |
| 1 | 1-7 | Sunday-Saturday |
| 2 | 1-7 | Monday-Sunday |
| 3 | 0-6 | Monday-Sunday |
| 11 | 1-7 | Monday-Sunday |
| 12 | 1-7 | Tuesday-Monday |
| 13 | 1-7 | Wednesday-Tuesday |
| 14 | 1-7 | Thursday-Wednesday |
| 15 | 1-7 | Friday-Thursday |
| 16 | 1-7 | Saturday-Friday |
| 17 | 1-7 | Sunday-Saturday |
Note: the WEEKDAY function will return a value even when the date is empty. Take care to trap this result if blank dates are possible.
Example: Let’s look at some Excel WEEKDAY function examples and explore how to use the WEEKDAY function as a worksheet function in Microsoft Excel:
Syntax: =WEEKDAY(A2)
Result:
=WEEKDAY(A3)
Result: 6
=WEEKDAY(A4)
Result: 7
=WEEKDAY(A5)
Result: 1
=WEEKDAY(A6)
Result: 2
=WEEKDAY(A7)
Result: 3
=WEEKDAY(A8)
Result:4
=WEEKDAY(A9)
Result: 5
=WEEKDAY(A10)
Result: 2
=WEEKDAY(A11)
Result: 6
Wish you success and soon remember the formula of Weekday function to serve calculations when working on Excel.
