How to count working days between dates with NETWORKDAYS

The plain gap between two dates counts weekends. NETWORKDAYS leaves Saturdays and Sundays out, so you get the working days only.

The formula

=NETWORKDAYS(A2,B2) in column C

What each part does

NETWORKDAYS: Counts days but skips Saturdays and Sundays.
A2, B2: The start date and the end date. The count runs from the first to the second.

How it works, and what to watch for

NETWORKDAYS skips weekends on its own. Hand it a list of public holidays as a third argument and it will skip those too.

It counts both the start and the end date. If you only want the days in between, subtract one from the answer.

For a working week that is not Monday to Friday, NETWORKDAYS.INTL lets you say which days count as the weekend.

Questions

How do I leave out public holidays as well?

Put your holiday dates somewhere on the sheet and add that range as the third argument: =NETWORKDAYS(A2,B2,holidays).

My week is not Monday to Friday, what then?

NETWORKDAYS.INTL takes a code, or a pattern of ones and zeros, that tells it which days are your weekend.

The example sheet

Start	Finish	Work days
2026-03-02	2026-03-20
2026-04-01	2026-04-30

If this helped, these are close by

Count the days between two dates — Plain days, weekends included
Count the days until a deadline — The count updates by itself each day
Add months to a date — Renewals and review dates

More on NETWORKDAYS, and every walkthrough that uses it.

Formula Steps Watch how Excel formulas are built. Download the sheet.

Settings: separator, Excel version

Argument separator

Set by your computer's language, not by the file. A frequent cause of a correct-looking formula being rejected.

Excel version

XLOOKUP, IFS, TEXTBEFORE and TEXTJOIN need Microsoft 365 or 2021; older versions return #NAME? instead. Choosing the older one switches every walkthrough to a formula that works there.