How to Insert Day and Date in Excel (3 Ways)

Often in workplaces or in other many reasons we need to encounter dates. Dates are quite common in our daily Excel workflow. From tracking down employee salary payments to managing supply chain goods, dates are a must thing to add an Excel worksheet. But at the same time, we need to know the name of the day of a particular date. Tracking these can be a pretty hectic thing to do manually. To answer the question of how we can insert day and date in Excel is explained below with adequate demonstrations.

Insert Day and Date in Excel: 3 Quick Ways

For the demonstration purpose, I am going to use the simple dataset below. In this dataset, only the dates that need the name of the day are included.

1. Use of TEXT Function to Insert Day and Date

The TEXT function is used in Excel to convert text, and numbers to character strings efficiently. In this case, it will take the date as an input automatically and return the name of the day with dates in character string format.

Steps

• First, select Cell C5 and enter the following formula:

• After entering the formula, you will notice that Cell C5 now shows the name of the day of the dates mentioned in Cell B5.

• Next, hold the Fill Handle icon at the corner of Cell C5. And drag it down to Cell C14.
• Now all of the dates in the Days column show the name of the days in the column.

Read More: How to Insert Date in Excel Formula

2. Using Number Formatting in Excel

Using number formatting is a very convenient method of formatting dates to have their name of the day. It can be done in two separate ways, one is by using options from the ribbon. Another is using custom formatting.

2.1 From Ribbon

Formatting the dates by using the ribbon is the most convenient and efficient one.

Steps

• To add the name of the day to your worksheet date, at first you need to select dates from your workbook and then go to number formatting in the Number group in the Home tab.

• After clicking the number formatting icon, a drop-down menu containing various types of formatting will appear, from that menu select the Long Date format, which includes the date with the name of the day.

• After selecting the Long Date format, you will notice all your dates now have the corresponding name of the day.

Read More: How to Insert Current Date in Excel

2.2 From Context Menu

Formatting dates with the name of the day can also be done by just bringing up the context menu by right-clicking the mouse.

Steps

• To add the name of the day of the dates you need, you first must select the dates that need to have a weekday name.

• After selecting the dates, right-click on your mouse to open the context menu. From the context menu, select Format Cells.

• After selecting Format Cells, a new window will open. From that window click on Number.  Then, select Date from the Category. In the Type field, select the format with the date alongside the name of the day. Then click OK.

• After clicking OK, you will notice that all the dates are now equipped with the name of the days.

Read More: Automatically Enter Date When Data Entered in Excel

3. Applying Custom Number Formatting in Excel

Custom formatting the dates is another effective way to rewrite dates with the name of the day.

Steps

• To include the name of the day by Custom Formatting, select the range of cells B5:B14.

• Selecting the cells, right-clicking the mouse button, and clicking the button will open the context menu, and from that menu, select Format Cells.

• Then a new window will launch, from that window click on Number.  Then, select Date from the Category. In the Type field, select the m/d/yyyy format if it is not there already. Then type “dddd” with m/d/yyyy in the type of bar. Click OK.

• After clicking OK, you will notice that all the dates now have the names of the days with them.

In this way, you can insert the day and date in Excel easily.

Download Practice Workbook

Download this practice workbook below.

Conclusion

To sum it up, the question “how to insert day and date in Excel” is answered here in 3 different ways. First, we utilized the TEXT function to format dates to have the name of the day. Then we used formatting tools to add the name of the day to dates. Among them was using number formatting with ribbon and context menu. Another one is to use custom formatting to add the names of the days in dates.

For this problem, a workbook is available for download where you can practice these methods.

Feel free to ask any questions or feedback through the comment section. Any suggestion for the betterment of the community will be highly appreciated.

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