How to Use Excel's NETWORKDAYS Function

By eHow Computers Editor

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Excel's NETWORKDAYS function calculates the number of work days between two dates. It will not count weekends or any other dates designated as holidays and is frequently used in calculations involving accrued employee benefits. NETWORKDAYS is part of the Analysis ToolPak and requires that this add-in be installed before it can be used. The following steps will show how to use Excel's NETWORKDAYS function.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1

Learn the syntax of NETWORKDAYS. It is NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date[, holidays]) where start_date is the first date and end_date is the last date of the date range. Holidays is an optional argument that specifies the holidays to exclude from the calculation.

Step2

Observe that Excel stores dates internally as a positive number representing the number of days beginning with a default date. Windows uses January 1, 1900, as serial number 1 and Excel for the Macintosh uses January 2, 1904, as serial number 1.

Step3

Enter start_date and end_date using the DATE function or some other function that returns a date to prevent the problems that can occur when a date is entered as text. NETWORKDAYS will return the #VALUE! error value if any of its arguments is not a valid date.

Step4

Include holidays as an array or range of cells containing the serial numbers for the days to be considered holidays.

Step5

Study some examples of NETWORKDAYS by entering the following in an Excel spreadsheet:

Row 1: Date, Description;
Row 2: 11/26/2008, Holiday;
Row 3: 12/4/2008, Holiday;
Row 4: 1/21/2009, Holiday.

=NETWORKDAYS(DATE("2008,10,1"),DATE("2009,1,22"),A2:A4) returns 105. There are 105 weekdays between October 1, 2008, and January 22, 2009, not counting the holidays entered as 11/26/2008, 12/4/2008 and 1/21/2009.