Excel 2000 in a Nutshell

Name

WORKDAY

Synopsis

This function (an Analysis ToolPak function) allows you to figure out which date is the specified number of workdays before or after a certain date. Notice I said workdays, not weekdays. Excel assumes there are always two non-workdays each week, so those days are ignored when finding the date. If you know that there are holidays within that time frame, you can specify those dates and Excel will ignore them.

To Calculate

=WORKDAY(Start_Date, Days, Holidays)

You must specify values for the Start_Date and Days arguments. The Holidays argument is optional.

Days

This argument indicates the number of workdays to add to find the date. A positive value means that you are looking for a date after the specified date. A negative value gives you a date prior to the specified date. Remember, you are dealing with workdays; you do not want to count weekends or holidays.

Holidays

If desired, you can specify the dates of any holidays that you know exist within the date range. Any dates you specify will be ignored when calculating the date. If you specify multiple dates, you must enclose the dates within brackets ({ }), as illustrated in Figure 13-14.

You can avoid specifying any holidays that fall on weekends since the function already ignores all weekend dates.

Example

This function returns the date as a serial number. The best method of changing the value to a date string is to simply format the cell as a date by selecting Format → Cell. Figure 13-14 illustrates how to find a ...