# Does a date fall on a weekend?

28 Oct 2022 Door Bjorn Meijer

In this article, I'll explain how you can find out if a date falls on a weekend or not. For this we use a simple formula.

## The formula

To find out whether a date falls on a weekend, we use the formula/function below.

WEEKDAY(serial_number;[type_number])

The function is structured as follows with the following arguments:

• serial number. This argument is required and must be a serial number. A date in a cell that is formatted as text therefore does not work. You will first have to convert this to a date format. A date that is formatted as a date is seen in Excel as a serial number and therefore works.
• type_number. This argument is optional and determines the result. With this argument you can indicate what the first day of the week is.

## Results WEEKDAY()

wdt_ID type_result Result
1 1 A number from 1 (Sunday) to 7 (Saturday). This corresponds to previous versions of Microsoft Excel.
2 2 A number from 1 (Monday) to 7 (Sunday).
3 3 A number from 0 (Monday) to 6 (Sunday).
4 11 A number from 1 (Monday) to 7 (Sunday).
5 12 A number from 1 (Tuesday) to 7 (Monday).
6 13 A number from 1 (Wednesday) to 7 (Tuesday).
7 14 A number from 1 (Thurs) to 7 (Wednesday).
8 15 A number from 1 (Friday) to 7 (Thursday).
9 16 A number from 1 (Saturday) to 7 (Friday).
10 17 A number from 1 (Sunday) to 7 (Saturday).

## How does the formula work

At the top formula =WEEKDAY(B1) Sunday is the first day of the week with the value 1. October 28, 2022 falls on a Friday. If one starts counting at 1 with Sunday, Friday is the sixth day.

In the middle formula =WEEKDAY(B1;2) Monday is the first day of the week with the value 1. In this case, Friday is the fifth day.

In the bottom formula =WEEKDAY(B1;3) Monday is the first day of the month, but has 0 as its initial value. If you start counting on Monday with 0, Friday is the fourth day.

## Determine the weekend

To determine whether a date falls on a weekend, we can use the function =WEEKDAY() combine with the OR() function.

The formula then becomes:

=OR(WEEKDAY(DATE)={1;7})

If the date falls on a Sunday (1), the first condition is met and is then true. If the date falls on a Saturday (7), then the second condition is met and is therefore true. If one of the two conditions WHERE is, the result is also WHERE. If both conditions FALSE will be the outcome FALSE to be.