NETWORKDAYS takes three arguments: start_date, end_date, and holidays. All three arguments must be valid Excel dates. Holidays are optional. To exclude holidays, provide a range of valid Excel dates for the holidays argument. Holidays are treated as non-working days and will not be included in the result. NETWORKDAYS includes both the start date and end date when calculating workdays. If you give NETWORKDAYS the same date for start date and end date, and the date is not a weekend or holiday, it will return 1.

Example

The general form of a NETWORKDAYS formula is as follows: In the example shown, holidays is the named range H5:H13, which contains non-working days in 2021. Columns E and F show the number of working days in each month of the year. The formula in cell E5 (Result 1) contains the NETWORKDAYS function but does not take into account holidays: The formula in cell F5 (Result 2) does take into account holidays: NETWORKDAYS will automatically exclude both Saturday and Sunday. This behavior is not configurable. If you need more flexibility, the NETWORKDAYS.INTL function provides a way to treat any day of the week as a non-working day.

Notes

NETWORKDAYS calculates whole workdays, ignoring any time values. NETWORKDAYS will automatically exclude both Saturday and Sunday. NETWORKDAYS includes both the start date and end date when calculating workdays. To create a custom weekend schedule, see the NETWORKDAYS.INTL function.

Dave Bruns

Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.