WEEKDAY Function – Day of Week From Date in Excel & G Sheets

This tutorial demonstrates how to use the WEEKDAY Function in Excel and Google Sheets to get the day of the week (1-7).

 

WEEKDAY Function Overview

The WEEKDAY Function Returns the day of the week as a number (1-7).

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

(Notice how the formula input appear)

WEEKDAY Function syntax and Inputs:

=WEEKDAY(serial_number,return_type)

serial_number – The 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).

return_type – OPTIONAL. A number

 

Calculate Day of Week From a Date

The WEEKDAY Function Returns the day of the week as a number (1-7).

By adding the CHOOSE Function you can return the name of the day of the week:

=CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(B3),"Sun","Mon","Tue","Wed","Thu","Fri","Sat")

Change Start of Week

By default, weeks start on Sundays, instead you change the start of the week to any day. Here we use 2 to change to week start to Monday instead of Sunday (the default):

=WEEKDAY(B3,2)

Here are more examples of changing the start of the week:

=WEEKDAY(B3,D3)

WEEKDAY in Google Sheets

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

WEEKDAY Examples in VBA

You can also use the WEEKDAY function in VBA. Type:
application.worksheetfunction.weekday(serial_number,return_type)
For the function arguments (serial_number, etc.), you can either enter them directly into the function, or define variables to use instead.