Question

How do I calculate the day of the week from a date in Excel?

Answer 1

In Excel, you can calculate the day of the week for a given date using the WEEKDAY function. Enter the date into a cell and then use the WEEKDAY function in a new cell, referencing the date's cell. Optionally, combine with the TEXT function to get the day's name.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the day of the week from a date in Excel, you can use Excel's built-in WEEKDAY function. The syntax for this function is WEEKDAY(serial_number, [return_type]), where serial_number is the date you're investigating, and [return_type] is an optional parameter that determines the type of return value.

Here's a simple procedure to follow:

1. Type the date in question into a cell in Excel (e.g., 3/14/2021).
2. In a new cell, write the WEEKDAY function and reference the cell with the date.
3. For example, if your date is in cell A1, the function would be =WEEKDAY(A1) or =WEEKDAY(A1, 1) for a Sunday-based week.
4. The function will return a number from 1 to 7, corresponding to each day of the week, with Sunday being 1 if you use the default return_type or 1 as the second argument.
5. To get the actual name of the day, you could use another function like TEXT, e.g., =TEXT(A1, "dddd") to show the full day name.