We all know that networkdays() an extremely powerful and simple excel formula can help you calculate no. of working days between 2 given dates.
But there is one problem with it. It assumes 5 day workweek starting with Monday to Friday. Not all countries have workweek from Monday to Friday. As Incubus wrote to me in an e-mail,
In Excel, the function “networkdays” doesn’t work for users in the middle east ‘cos it counts Saturday & Sunday as weekend. This is good enough only if you live in elsewhere, but for us weekend is Friday & Saturday.
This got me thinking and I ended up writing a user defined formula (UDF) to calculate working days between 2 given dates with any criteria. This will be good for calculating payrolls for temporary workers, offshore partners and of course people working countries where Saturday or Sunday or not usually holidays.
Please download the NetWorkingDays Add-in if you want to use this function.
If you are curious what is inside, see the UDF code
How to use the NetWorkingDays() UDF?
Once you download the add-in, just install the add-in by,
- [in Excel 2003] By going to Tools > Addins > Browse
- [in Excel 2007] By going to Office Button > Excel Options > Addins > “Go button” > Browse
- Specify the location where you saved the downloaded file
Now that the add-in is installed, you can use the UDF by writing a formula like this:
=networkingdays("01-06-2009","02-07-2019","12356")
The first argument is start date, the second one is end date and third one tells which days of week are working (Monday is 1 and Sunday is 7). So the above formula counts all the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays between 01-06-2009 and 02-07-2019
Known Errors and Limitations
The formula returns #VALUE! error when you try really long durations (like trying to find all the workingdays between now and a century later)
Another thing is, you cannot feed a custom holiday list to this formula. But that is very easy to add on, so I didn’t bother.
So go ahead and give it a try
Download the NetWorkingDays() UDF Excel Add-in
and tell me what you think…
On dates and times in Excel: Date & Time Formulas | 10 Tips on Using Dates & Times in Excel
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.