NETWORKDAYS

Count the days between two dates, skipping weekends.

Syntax

NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date, [holidays])

Examples

Every example below was executed against VisiGrid engine 0.35.0 — not transcribed from another vendor's documentation. Reproduce any of them with vgrid calc.

Both ends count

This is the part that catches people out. Monday to Friday is 5, not 4 — NETWORKDAYS counts days, not the gaps between them. Plain subtraction counts gaps:

=NETWORKDAYS(DATE(2024,3,11), DATE(2024,3,15))   → 5    five working days
=DAYS(DATE(2024,3,15), DATE(2024,3,11))          → 4    four days apart

Both are right for different questions. “How many days will this take” wants the first; “how far apart are these” wants the second.

DAYS(end, start) is plain subtraction with the arguments named, and note the order — end first, which is the reverse of how NETWORKDAYS reads.

Excluding holidays

The third argument is a range of dates to skip on top of weekends:

=NETWORKDAYS(A1, B1, Holidays!A:A)

Keep that list on its own sheet and reference it from every formula. A holiday list pasted into three places diverges the first time one of them is edited.

What it assumes

Saturday and Sunday are the weekend, and that is not configurable here — Excel’s NETWORKDAYS.INTL, which takes a weekend parameter for other working weeks, is not implemented yet. If your week runs Sunday to Thursday, this function does not model it.

Excel compatibility

Matches Excel, including inclusive endpoints and negative results for reversed dates.

Related functions

• WORKDAY
• DAYS
• WEEKDAY
• DATE
• DAY