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How to add business days to a date in Excel and Google Sheets
Topic:Date arithmeticExcel & Google Sheets
=WORKDAY(A2,B2)Try it with your data
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Step by step
- 1Enter the start date in A2 and the number of business days to add in B2.
- 2In a result cell, enter =WORKDAY(A2,B2).
- 3Format the result cell as a date if it shows a number.
- 4To exclude holidays, add a holiday range as the third argument: =WORKDAY(A2,B2,D2:D6).
- 5For non-standard work weeks, use WORKDAY.INTL: =WORKDAY.INTL(A2,B2,"0000011").
Tips
- WORKDAY(date,0) returns the date itself if it is a workday, or the next workday if it falls on a weekend. This is useful for normalizing a date to the nearest business day.
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Frequently asked
Does WORKDAY count the start date?
No. WORKDAY starts counting from the day after the start date. So =WORKDAY("2024-01-01",1) returns 2024-01-02 (or the next workday if Jan 2 is a holiday).
How do I subtract business days to find a past deadline?
Use a negative number for the days argument: =WORKDAY(A2,-5) returns the date 5 business days before the date in A2.
More on Date arithmetic
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