Excel Function Networkdays

“NETWORKDAYS” function is very helpful feature in the Microsoft excel to calculate the working days from a particular period excluding “Saturday and Sundays”. NETWORKDAYS function subtract the Start Day from the End Date provided.

It comes with an advantage of excluding “Holidays” i.e. Holidays will not be counted as working days even those are falling between Monday to Friday.

This function really helps to in multiple ways, for example to calculate total pay days, prepare day wise work schedule, allocation and planning of project for an organization for a period. “Holiday” feature also helps to utilize the function in very effective manner.

Things To Remember

Please note that it will always returns to the whole number or integer value as output.

Also, Microsoft Excel calculate dates from 1^st January 1900, if you use any date before than 1^st January 1900 it will be shown as #VALUE! (Error)

Excel Function Networkdays Syntax:-

Syntax: =NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date, [holidays])

Start_date argument is the date from which workday will be calculated. This date can be a working day or weekend, past day or future day.

End_date argument is the date to which workday will be calculated.

[holidays] Argument (Optional), Holidays argument is optional argument and used to excludes the holidays from NETWORKDAYS function output. We can give the complete range to exclude such days. Holidays are exception dates and such dates will not be counted as workdays (even those are falling on Monday to Friday)

Example 1: Networkdays function without (Holidays) option

We have taken 1^st January 2019 as Start date and 31^st December 2019 as End date and will be calculating net working days during a period of one year. Following the syntax, we have 261 net working days during that period

Example 2: Networkdays Function with(Holidays) option

We have taken 1^st January 2019 as Start date and 31^st December 2019 as End date and have a list of holidays.

Net working days will be calculating considering 1^st Jan 2019 as Holiday and total net working days for a year will be 260.

Example 3: Networkdays function with Date prior to 1st january 1900

We mentioned that Microsoft Excel will calculate the date functions starting from 1^st January 1900 and if we use any date prior 1^st January 1900 this will show as #VALUE! (Error)

We have taken 1^st January 1889 as Start date and 31^st December 1889 and since it is prior to 1^st January 1900 output is shown as #VALUE! (Error)