The Excel NETWORKDAYS function counts the working days between two dates — Monday through Friday, minus any holidays you list. It answers the questions calendars are made of: how many business days until the deadline, how many working days did that ticket sit open, how many staff-days are in this quarter. Two things to burn in: the count is inclusive of both end dates, and the weekend is hard-coded to Saturday–Sunday (for any other schedule, see NETWORKDAYS.INTL).
Syntax
| Argument | Description | |
|---|---|---|
start_date | Required | First date of the period. Counted in the total if it is a weekday. |
end_date | Required | Last date of the period — also counted if it is a weekday. Swapped dates give a negative count instead of an error. |
holidays | Optional | A range (or array) of dates to exclude — company holidays, plant shutdowns, anything. Lock it with absolute references ($E$2:$E$10) so it survives copying. |
Available in: every modern version of Excel. The weekend is always Saturday and Sunday — that is baked in. Friday–Saturday weekends, four-day weeks, and every other schedule belong to NETWORKDAYS.INTL.
Counting business days, with and without holidays
January 5, 2026 is a Monday and January 30 is a Friday — four full weeks, so 20 weekdays. MLK Day (January 19) falls inside the range, and the holiday list knocks it out:
| A | B | D | E | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Project | Working days | Holiday | Date | |
| 2 | Start: 01/05/2026 | 19 | New Year’s Day | 01/01/2026 | |
| 3 | End: 01/30/2026 | MLK Day | 01/19/2026 | ||
| 4 | Memorial Day | 05/25/2026 |
Holidays outside the range (New Year’s, Memorial Day) are ignored harmlessly, so one master holiday list serves every formula in the workbook.
Both endpoints count — a one-day “range” on a weekday returns 1:
Try it: interactive NETWORKDAYS demo
Pick a date range and toggle 2026 holidays on and off — the working-day count updates live.
Real-world recipes
Business days remaining until a deadline in B2 (today counts if it is a weekday):
Turnaround time for each ticket — opened in B2, closed in C2, copied down a column:
Working days in any month, straight from its first day in A2:
Going the other direction? NETWORKDAYS measures a span you already have. To find a date — “what is 10 working days from today?” — use WORKDAY, its mirror image.
Errors & common pitfalls
Pitfall: forgetting the count is inclusive. Monday to Friday is 5 working days to NETWORKDAYS, but if you mean “working days between” or are computing an SLA where the start day should not count, subtract 1. Off-by-one disagreements between this function and human intuition are the #1 support question.
Pitfall: unlocked holiday range. Copy =NETWORKDAYS(B2,C2,E2:E10) down a column and the holiday range slides to E3:E11, E4:E12… silently dropping holidays. Always anchor it: $E$2:$E$10.
#VALUE! — a date argument isn’t a real date. Usually text-formatted dates imported from elsewhere. Rebuild them with DATE or DATEVALUE, and check with ISNUMBER.
Pitfall: weekend holidays do nothing. A holiday list entry that falls on a Saturday is already a non-working day, so it changes nothing — correct behavior, but surprising if your company observes the holiday on the following Monday. List the observed dates, not the nominal ones.
Pitfall: a negative result. NETWORKDAYS does not error when start and end are reversed; it returns a negative count. Handy when intentional, baffling when not — check the argument order.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
Does NETWORKDAYS count the start and end dates?
How do I exclude company holidays?
=NETWORKDAYS(A2, B2, $E$2:$E$10). Dates outside the period are ignored, so one master list works for every formula.Can NETWORKDAYS use a weekend other than Saturday-Sunday?
"0000011" defining exactly which days are off.What's the difference between NETWORKDAYS and WORKDAY?
Why is my NETWORKDAYS result negative?
Can I count working days remaining in the current month?
=NETWORKDAYS(TODAY(), EOMONTH(TODAY(),0), $E$2:$E$10) — today through month-end, holidays excluded, refreshing automatically each day.Master functions like this in one day
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