where holidays is the named range E5:E6. Because the days argument is set to 1, the formula returns the “next working day” on each new row. Holidays are provided as the named range E5:E6, which contains dates. Notice December 24 and 25 are excluded from the list since these days are holidays. All dates are formatted with the custom number format " ddd d-mmm-yyyy".

Custom weekends

If you need take into account custom weekends (i.e. weekends are Saturday only, Sunday and Monday, etc.) you’ll need to switch to the more robust WORKDAY.INTL function, which allows you to set what days of the week are considered are considered weekends, by supplying a weekend argument in the form of a special code, as explained in this example.

Another way

You can also generate a series of workdays with a formula that uses the WEEKDAY function. In this case, the formula tests the start date to see if is a Saturday or not. If so, 3 days are added to the start date. If not, just one day is added.

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.