Blank cells are an invisible pain in the analysis. Dealing with them is frustrating, time-consuming and often very complex. At chandoo.org, we are not big fans of blank cells. That is why we wrote:
- How to delete blank cells & rows?
- Dealing with blanks – case study
- Quickly filling blank cells in a table
- Extracting non-blank data from a list
Today, lets talk about one more scenario. Lets say you want to find out the first non-blank item in a list. How would you do it?
Finding first non-blank item in a list
Lets say our list is in the range B3:B100.
Without using formulas
If you just want to get the first non-blank item in a list and do not want to use formulas, then you can remove all the blank items from the list. To do this:
- Select entire list
- Press F5, click on special
- Choose blanks, click ok.
- Press CTRL –
- Remove rows (or shift cells up as needed).
- Done!
Now that the blank cells are gone, just refer to B3 to get the first non-blank item in the list.
Using formulas
Although the non-formula approach works, it is manual. That means every time your data changes, you must repeat the steps. Not very cool, especially if you call yourself awesome. So, lets use a powerful formula to get that first non blank item in our list.
First see the formula:
=VLOOKUP("*", B3:B100, 1,FALSE)
How it works?
We want to lookup for first cell that contains something. It does not matter what that value is.
That is what * does. * is a wild card in Excel. When you ask VLOOKUP to find *, it finds the first cell that contains anything.
NOTE: This approach finds first cell that contains any TEXT. So if the first non-blank cell is a number (or date, % or Boolean value), the formula shows next cell that contains text.
How to find first non-blank value (text or number)?
If you want to find first non-blank value, whether it is text or number, then you can use below array formula.
=INDEX(B3:B100, MATCH(FALSE, ISBLANK(B3:B100), 0))
Make sure you press CTRL+Shift+Enter after typing this formula.
How this formula works?
ISBLANK(B3:B100) portion: This gives us list of TRUE / FALSE values depending on the 98 cells in B3:B100 are blank or not. It looks like this:
{TRUE;TRUE;TRUE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE; ...}
MATCH(FALSE, ISBLANK(…), 0) portion: Once we have the TRUE / FALSE values, we just need to find the first FALSE value (ie, first non-blank cell). That is what this MATCH function does. It finds an exact match of FALSE value in the list. (Related: Using MATCH Formula)
INDEX(B3:B100, MATCH(…)) portion: Once we know which cell is the first non-blank cell, we need its value. That is what INDEX does. (Related: Introduction to INDEX formula)
Home work for you
If you like this formula and want some challenge, read on.
For these home work problems, use the range B3:B100 or named range list in your formulas.
- Can you think of some other formulas to find first non-blank cell?
- What formula gives 2nd non-blank cell value?
- What formula gives last non-blank cell value?
Go ahead and post your answers using comments.
Drawing a blank when working on lookups?
If you are giving blank stares whenever your boss asks for lookup related stuff, then you are going to love this. My latest publication, The VLOOKUP Bookis a comprehensive guide to VLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH, LOOKUP and other techniques to lookup any data and answer questions with confidence.
|
Comprehensive and easy to understand
This is a book for everyone who uses Vlookup. Most of us think… Oh.. I already know the function. But this book will open your eyes to some brilliant techniques. – By Dr. Nitin Paranjape
Solid introduction to lookup functions
This books does a wonderful job of taking each of the lookup functions available in Excel, breaking them down to a simple, easy-to-understand level. – by Lucas Moraga |
35 Responses to “Skip weekends while autofilling dates in excel”
[...] Original post by Chandoo [...]
Hi,
Is there any way that I will choose which are my "working days"?
means, I want to leave also Friday as a free day and not only Saturday.
Or, maybe someday I will pick Tuesday as a day off.
I need to also peek Wednessday, Thursday and Friday as days off. Also, for Tuesday, I would need to leave it off once every two weeks. Is there a way to easy achieve this, so that I won't actually add to my workload?
Hi Mihai... you can use pattern fill feature to do this. Simply follow steps in below demo.
Hi,
I am using MS Office 2007 and for some reason, it does not show me these options. It just shows me 3 options:
Copy Cell (Not sure about the exact text)
Copy with Formatting
Copy without Formatting
Any idea how to get those options up?
Regards,
Deep
@Deep : I am not so well versed with 2007, but here is how you can do this using menus:
enter first date of the series
select the range you want to fill
go to menu > edit > fill > series
in the dialog, select date as the series type and "weekdays only" option
press ok...
Let me know if this doesnt work...
Now that was FAST!!!
I tried it but unfortunately it didn't work..
Here is the screenshot:
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6573/excelsheetyr2.gif
This is what I tried..
I put the date in one row, in another row, added some calculations (as you can see in the image) and drag the content in other rows..
I could not find any Edit menu so i just clicked on the icon as you have shown in the 2nd image..
I hope I did the right thing...
Hmm...
there should be an edit menu as far as I know. Let me check that...
meanwhile... if it works you can use formulas to fill the series.
1. just enter the first date
2. in the 2nd row, enter a formula like =if(weekday(firstdatecell,2)=6,firstdatecell+2, firstdatecell+1)
3. copy the formula over the rest of the range...
@Deep:
you have to use the autofill handle, the small box at the lower right of the active cell. Right click on the autofill handle and drag down to the cells you want to autofill. A menu pops up showing the weekdays only option and others.
@Chandoo - Thanks but it did not work with my calculations. 🙁
@Robert - Yes, it worked this time but I guess, in my case it won't work as I want to add up the days from the column on the left. (As shown in the image)
Basically this is what I want:
1. I want to define project start date
2. There are no. of days assigned for each module
3. I want excel to calculate the date automatically. (By adding up the no. of days and deducting the weekends)
Any kind of help is appriciated.
Reagrds,
Deep
@Deep,
sorry, I misunderstood your question, I thought you would be searching for the autofill-function only (values).
If I got your request corrctly now, you could use the WORKDAY-function, returning the date before or after a specified number of workdays.
In Excel 2003 and earlier the Add-In Analysis Toolpak has to be installed, but since you are using 2007, it should work immediately.
@Deep.. as Robert suggested, Workday is what you should be using. It will calculate future date based number of working days you want to add to input date. Also, you can use this with your own list of holidays.
Thanks Robert, Chandoo.. I will try the things.. 🙂
I tried it and this time it worked.. Thanks to both of you.. you guys made my life much more easier 🙂
[...] You can also customize excel lists so that you can auto-fill, lets say bank holidays in your country or types of beer in your pub. One more auto fill trick. [...]
Hello,
I understand how to turn off the weekend values for a date fill in a regular auto fill. But, what if you are trying to create a custom one, that counts the amount of days in the formula bar, like 2 days, then 5 days, then 1 day etc etc etc, but they must be working days only and they must not include the weekends.
can that be done?
thanks!
hi..
i'm using excel 2007
I'm trying to insert current date automatically
then it suppose not to change after i save and open it on the next day.I need it to stay on the issued date.
i'm using Today function and it is not well work 4 me.
anybody can help to resolve my prob here?
please...
Hi guys,
How about if I just wanna fill up with weekend? The way I am doing now is using the function weekday and use filter to get weekend. Would appreciate if any one comes up with a better idea. Thank you very much.
Regards
Cheng
What happened to being able to indicate the series by adding a few cells and then using the autofill to copy? I can't get this to work - I need 4 rows with the same date skipping weekends.
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
Hi Kathy, sorry for a late comment. However, here's the solution.
1.) put your 1st desired date in the 1st 4 cells required (e.g. <cell A1:A4> 2/6/2012)
2.) put the following formula as is in the following four cell (i.e. A5:A8)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)=5,A1+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
Note: "=5" denotes the number of working days in the week
"+3" denotes the number of days on weekends.
"+1" last denotes the number of days after the working date.
3.) Finally, select cells A4:A8 and then drag drown for furthur dates. The formula will skip Saturday & Sunday in the dates.
Let me know, if you want to tweak the formula as per other ways.
Kamlesh: Thanks for the formula. That was what I was looking for. It works the same in Google Docs Spreadsheets. At first I thought it didn't and did some unnecessary tweaking to make it work.
I was confused by the "IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)" the modifier 2. I took it out and surpise, the formula didn't work right. I changed the 5 to 6 and then it worked. Turns out, (you probably know this) the default week starts with Sunday. Using 2 makes it start with Monday.
Any way, I didn't know about the Weekday function. Thanks for sharing this post.
Hi, Kamlesh, before i was using "workday" instead of "weekday" but it didn't work.
thanks for sharing the right formula.
At this moment I am going to do my breakfast, when having my breakfast
coming yet again to read further news.
Hi,
I'm using excel 2007
I'm trying to calculate a workday
4 nov 2014(a1) to 12 nov 2014(a2)
Normally i'm using Int formula to do this
=int(a2)-int(a1)
But, hey thats including weekend too... 😀
how do you calculate workday with this condition ?
and if there is not only those day, i mean in a month or two
Thanks before
sagari
@Sagari
=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(DATE(2014,11,4),DATE(2014,11,12),1)
=7
You can also include holidays into the formula by having a list of holidays in say A1:A10
Then use
=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(DATE(2014,11,4),DATE(2014,11,12),1,A1:A10)
Thanks for replying
Get #NAME? in return when using NETWORKDAYS.INTL
But get 7 with NETWORKDAYS
why ??
Hi
i had a query while making a template for one of my school daily task.
Most of the work in these template includes copy from webpage and paste in the template.
so the problem here is, whenevr me or my mates try to do ctrl+v
the format of the cell changes automatically.
I suggested them to use ctrl+alt+v (text) to paste
but they are not ok with it. they want me to make template in such a way that it should work with normal ctrl +v
Any ideas guys ?
Our working week is Tuesday to Saturday if I wish to make a sheet solely using those days is there a formula I can use ?
I need your support for date.
I wand to numbering actual working date based on date
below is expected result... so how can apply formula to get number automatically... please help me get resolve this problem... many thanks in advanced.
1 8/1/2018
2 8/2/2018
3 8/3/2018
8/4/2018
8/5/2018
4 8/6/2018
5 8/7/2018
6 8/8/2018
7 8/9/2018
8 8/10/2018
8/11/2018
8/12/2018
9 8/13/2018
10 8/14/2018
11 8/15/2018
12 8/16/2018
13 8/17/2018
8/18/2018
8/19/2018
14 8/20/2018
15 8/21/2018
16 8/22/2018
17 8/23/2018
18 8/24/2018
Dear Sir,
I want to make a series of December month which will show all the dates without Fridays.
Is it Possible sir??
Interesting question Salauddin... The built-in options in Excel can't generate dates like this. But you can use simple formulas to make up such a series.
In first cell (say A1) write the starting date (1-Dec-2019 for example). Makesure this date is not a Friday.
In the next cell (A2) write =WORKDAY.INTL(A1,1,16)
Now drag down the A2 cell to fill up dates. Stop when you reach the end of your range of dates.
If your Excel doesn't have WORKDAY.INTL(), then use the below alternative formula.
=A1+1+(WEEKDAY(A1)=5)
Thank you, Thank you very much sir. it worked perfectly & I was expecting something like that.
i want to make a template with date that skips fortnightly is it possible in excel
Hi Chandoo, I need to skip weekends from a specified list of dates.
from the below information I want to pick only the weekdays amount only along with lookup which has builder name separately.
Date Builder Units Amount
06-Jan-08 Doug 8 389
09-Feb-08 Dave 10 385
15-Mar-08 Dave 3 771
18-Apr-08 Brian 5 313
05-May-08 Larry 10 574
22-May-08 Rob 8 730
25-Jun-08 Morgan 4 471
15-Aug-08 Jones 1 548
12-Dec-08 Doug 3 323
10-Apr-09 Dave 5 712
14-May-09 Dave 9 432
10-Sep-09 Brian 6 460
31-Oct-09 Larry 3 741
18-Sep-08 Rob 8 580
25-Nov-08 Doug 6 685
29-Dec-08 Dave 2 401
24-Mar-09 Dave 10 342
04-Jul-09 Brian 8 475
21-Jul-09 Larry 3 535
07-Aug-09 Rob 3 663
26-Feb-08 Gill 10 762
22-Oct-08 Jones 5 425
08-Nov-08 Doug 1 639
27-Apr-09 Dave 4 409
27-Sep-09 Dave 4 612
01-Sep-08 Brian 6 688
17-Jun-09 Larry 10 663
24-Aug-09 Rob 5 608
23-Jan-08 Morgan 6 388
Thank you! I've been struggling with this for ages and today, thanks to this post, I finally figured that I had to customize my toolbar in order to utilise the "Fill" menu. This will make my monthly reports much, much neater