Would you like to calculate the number of days remaining before the next holiday? Use Excel to count the number of working days.

Thanks to the NETWORKDAYS, Excel calculates for you the number of working days between 2 dates: it excludes weekends and public holidays. You will just have to specify which are the public holidays.

First, list the holidays for the period in question: enter the dates as a list.

Option: If you don‘t know the exact dates, you can view them in Outlook and retrieve the dates. Select all your dates and make a named range (this will make your formula easier to read and will be reusable if you do other calculations of the same type in the same file).

Note: If you do not enter holidays, Excel will only consider weekends as non–working days.

Then enter the start date and end date in 2 cells.

Option: You can rename each of the cells.

Finally, in another cell, enter the formula =NETWORKDAYS(

  • As the 1st argument, select the start date, type,
  • Then select the end date, type,
  • And finally select the list of holidays (or type the name of the list of holidays).

Your formula should look like

=NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date, [holidays])

Click Enter and Excel will show you the number of working days.