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In Microsoft Excel, the WEEKDAY function can be used to convert a date to a day of the week. The function takes the date as an argument and returns a number from 1 to 7 corresponding to the day of the week. For example, WEEKDAY(7/1/2019) returns a value of 2, indicating Monday as the day of the week for July 1, 2019. Additionally, the WEEKDAY function can also be used to assign custom names for each day of the week instead of the numerical value.
You can use the following formulas to convert a date to the day of the week in Excel:
Formula 1: Convert Date to Abbreviated Day of Week (e.g. “Thu”)
=TEXT(A2, "ddd")
Formula 2: Convert Date to Full Name of Day of Week (e.g. “Thursday”)
=TEXT(A2, "dddd")
Each formula assumes that the date of interest is located in cell A2.
The following examples show how to use each formula in practice with the following list of dates in Excel:
Example 1: Convert Date to Abbreviated Day of Week
To convert the date in cell A2 to the abbreviated day of the week, we can type the following formula into cell B2:
=TEXT(A2, "ddd")
We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:
Column B displays the abbreviated day of the week for each date in column A.
We can verify that the days of the week are correct by manually checking a calendar for one of the dates.
For example, we can check a calendar to see that the day of the week for the first date of 12/4/2022 is indeed a Sunday:
Example 2: Convert Date to Full Name of Day of Week
To convert the date in cell A2 to the full name of the day of the week, we can type the following formula into cell B2:
=TEXT(A2, "dddd")
We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:
Column B displays the full name of the day of the week for each date in column A.
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