Check Whether a Date Falls on a Weekend

Excel & Google Sheets

How it works

WEEKDAY returns which day of the week a date is, as a number, and the second argument picks the numbering scheme. Type 2 is the tidy one: Monday=1 through Sunday=7, so Saturday and Sunday are exactly the values above 5, and one comparison catches both. The IF then translates the test into a readable label. Without the second argument, WEEKDAY defaults to type 1 — Sunday=1 through Saturday=7 — where the weekend sits awkwardly at both ends (1 and 7) and a single > test can't isolate it. That default is the source of most broken weekend checks.

WEEKDAY(A2,2)

Day number with Monday=1 … Sunday=7.

>5

TRUE only for 6 (Saturday) and 7 (Sunday).

"Weekend","Weekday"

The labels to show. Swap in whatever your report needs.

When to use it

Use it to audit delivery schedules, block payment runs from landing on weekends, sanity-check go-live dates, or drive conditional formatting that tints weekend rows.

Common mistakes

• ✕Leaving out the return type.

  ✓=WEEKDAY(A2)>5 uses Sunday=1 numbering, so Sundays return 1 and slip through as "Weekday". Always pass 2 as the second argument for this test.

• ✕Rebuilding the test as two comparisons.

  ✓=IF(OR(WEEKDAY(A2)=1,WEEKDAY(A2)=7),…) works but is longer and easier to get wrong. WEEKDAY(A2,2)>5 does it in one clean comparison.

• ✕Needing to *move* the date, not just flag it.

  ✓This formula only labels. To shift a weekend date to the next working day, use =WORKDAY(A2-1,1), which returns A2 itself when it's already a weekday.