Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Calculating Weekend Dates.

Calculating Weekend Dates

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 5, 2019)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


Reuben needs to know, for any given date, when the next weekend is. For his purposes, weekends begin on Saturday, so this basically means coming up with a way to "round up" a date (Sunday through Friday) to the next Saturday.

There are any number of ways that you can calculate the date of the next Saturday. This is made possible because dates are stored internally by Excel as numbers, and numbers can be easily manipulated. Perhaps the easiest way to calculate the next Saturday is this formula:

=A1+7-WEEKDAY(A1)

You can also use a very simple application of the CEILING function, as shown here:

=CEILING(A1,7)

Remember that when you use a formulaic approach, Excel may not automatically format the result to look like a date. That's easy enough to fix; just apply the cell formatting you want.

These two formulas will return the date of the next Saturday, unless the date in A1 is already a Saturday. If you want a starting date of Saturday to return the date of the following Saturday, then this formula will work just fine:

= IF(WEEKDAY(A1)=7,7,7-WEEKDAY(A1))+A1

An alternate formula (that doesn't use the IF statement) to calculate the next Saturday if the starting date in A1 is already a Saturday is:

=(A1+7+1)-WEEKDAY(A1+1)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9305) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Calculating Weekend Dates.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Unique Military Date Format

Some industries (such as the military) have special formatting that they use to represent dates. Here is one such format ...

Discover More

Spell-Check Won't Work

Having problems making spell check work on a portion of your document? There are two primary causes for such an ...

Discover More

Copying Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting is a great feature in Excel. Here's how you can copy conditional formats from one cell to another ...

Discover More

Program Successfully in Excel! This guide will provide you with all the information you need to automate any task in Excel and save time and effort. Learn how to extend Excel's functionality with VBA to create solutions not possible with the standard features. Includes latest information for Excel 2024 and Microsoft 365. Check out Mastering Excel VBA Programming today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Determining Contract Weeks

Everyone seems to determine the difference between dates differently. Nicole has a need to calculate contact weeks (the ...

Discover More

Assuming Dates are in the Current Century

Type a date into Excel that includes a two-digit year, and you may not always get the year in the century you intended. ...

Discover More

Tombstone Date Math

Doing math with dates is easy in Excel. Doing math with old dates, such as those you routinely encounter in genealogy, is ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is nine minus 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.