Some of you know that I have a full time job as a business analyst with one of the largest IT companies in the world. I help insurance companies do their IT better in that job. Almost a week ago, I have resigned from my day time job.
Back story:
As far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to run my own company. It is one of the reasons why I pursued MBA. But over the course of years, the part in me that is curious, risk taking and stubborn has vanished and was replaced by cautious, calculated and flexible self. May be it is all the education and social set up, or may be it is just me. The change has been subtle but very powerful. So much that when I finished MBA in 2006, I did not consider setting up my own company, even for a second. I was bending backwards to impress the recruiters and get a steady 9 to 5 job.
Year 2007 – the year of change:
The transformation from cautious to curious has been gradual and began in 2007. I went to USA for the first time in my life and met several interesting and enterprising people. I also realized the potential of web based startups. They are low cost, easy to setup and run and can be managed on part-time basis. Around the same time , my crush with Excel happened. So I started writing about it on my personal blog (yes, PHD used to be a personal blog before 2007. Dig deep in to archives and you will find a lot stories, experiences and trivia). But I also started a small website in the movie domain. The movie site didnt go that well, but PHD kept on rocking.
In the meanwhile, my day job kept me busy and gave me lots of challenging assignments. So I pushed PHD to the side track and worked on it in the nights and weekends. But somewhere in my heart I knew that I would have to quit my job and pursue PHD as a full time venture. But the cautious side of me never let it happen.
Years 2008 and 2009 – Foundation years:
Along the years (in 2008 and 2009) I cleared my student loans and most of the mortgage (house loan). I also made some buffer money by working in foreign locations and monetizing PHD’s traffic thru ads. All this was poured in to our bank accounts to create little cushion for us. Even then I wasnt thinking about quitting my job and starting a company.
Then I became dad in late 2009. Simultaneously I launched excel project management templates for sale. As my kids grew, the sales of PM Templates also went up. This was encouraging.
Year 2010 – Finally,
So in year 2010 I took some of the money made from PM Templates and invested in the Excel School program. Again many of you have welcomed the program with both hands and I saw a generous boost in part time business. But even then I wasn’t quite sure if working on PHD alone is a good idea.
Then something strange happened. Between day job, work on PHD I was spending very little time my family. My work demanded that I be in Denmark for extended time and I could hardly find any time to be with Jo and the kids. I was being a bad dad and husband. And that feeling was killing me inside.
So in March 2010 I came back to India on vacation. My initial plan was to take a 6 month sabbatical from day job and spend that time with my wife and kids. But after spending a month with them I couldn’t imagine going back to work. So I sent in my resignation last week.
What next?
I jokingly tell my wife that instead of working for one boss, I have now 9500 bosses. Each with different and very high expectations. 🙂
- Well, I will devote more time to PHD and update it regularly. I will strive to maintain the quality of posts and interaction here.
- I will also launch few new products (may be one product every 2 months) to keep the income stream trickling.
- I will be running Excel School on regular basis (or make it as an on-demand product).
- I will be doing more Excel Consulting work (Do you need a dashboard or report to be done? Drop me an email to get a quote).
- I will be able to conduct on-site training sessions any where in India.
- But most importantly I will be there to smile when Jo, Nishanth and Nakshatra wake up from sleep, and when they go to bed. every day. And that makes me happy 🙂
PS: I am planning to chronicle my journey as an entrepreneur at startup desi. Follow me there if you like to know how to run a one man shop online.
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