If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
Probably the reason 21/4/2008 doesn't work for you is because your regional
settings aren't set-up as d/m/y, BUT as m/d/y. It *would* work on Bob's machine because he probably has the European short date set-up in his regional settings. And of course, 2008/04/21 should work *everywhere*, since it's recognized as international. -- Regards, RD --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please keep all correspondence within the NewsGroup, so all may benefit ! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Epinn" wrote in message ... Bob, Glad I still caught you this late. Thank you for enlightening me. 21/4/2008 is not a number here, so it errors. If it gives me an error, then I know. The problem is it returns "7" instead of "5" in my other example. That's very misleading and dangerous. =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") gives #VALUE! =WEEKDAYS(--"4/21/2008") gives 2. So, I understand why you prefer =WEEKDAY(--"2008-04-21"). But I prefer "/" to "-" and I tested it. I am glad that "/" works too. My preference will be =WEEKDAY(--"2008/4/21"). I assume "--" above is the same as "--" in SUMPRODUCT(). Please confirm. Can't find double negating in Help. I find date functions may be as confusing as SUMPRODUCT(). Will see. Epinn "Bob Phillips" wrote in message ... But the difference is that when you key 21/4/2008 into cell A1, Excel recognises it as a date and converts it to an underlying value of 39559, which it presents/formats as that date. When you enter it into a function, the function treats it as its argument, and says that it is invalid as it expects a number (the true underlying value). 21/4/2008 is not a number here, so it errors. If you want to enter the date into the WEEKDAY function, you have to force it into a number, either using another function such as you did with DATE, or coerce it directly, like =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") or my preferred format of =WEEKDAY(--"2008-04-21") -- HTH Bob Phillips (replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct) "Epinn" wrote in message ... Regarding WEEKDAY(), I read that problems can occur if dates are entered as text. Based on this, it is understandable that =WEEKDAY(2/14/2008) returns a wrong result (7). This is because general format is same as text. If I enter =WEEKDAY(DATE(2008,2,14)), I get the correct result (5). Okay, so far. What I don't understand is the following. I click A1 and key in 2/14/2008, then in A2, I key in =WEEKDAY(A1). I also get the correct result (5). The way I enter 2/14/2008 to A1 is exactly the same as I enter 2/14/2008 *directly* to the formula. It amazes me that referencing A1 in WEEKDAY() gives me the correct answer whereas keying it in as part of the formula won't work. Comments welcome. Epinn |
#12
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
Yeah tried that RD but I'm cocatenating the result and that
returns a value of 38969 instead of september for the cell even though it displays as september. The Vlookup works fine so I might just stick with that. Thanks for postig Martin |
#13
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
Try this to concatenate:
C1 contains the text, 20 days in SO ... =C1&" "&TEXT(A2,"mmmm") -- HTH, RD --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please keep all correspondence within the NewsGroup, so all may benefit ! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "MartinW" wrote in message ... Yeah tried that RD but I'm cocatenating the result and that returns a value of 38969 instead of september for the cell even though it displays as september. The Vlookup works fine so I might just stick with that. Thanks for postig Martin |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
Hi Epinn,
The "--" is exactly the same as its usage in SUMPRODUCT, it is coercing into a numeric. =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") gives #VALUE! =WEEKDAYS(--"4/21/2008") gives 2. As RD says the second version of that works for you, but fails for me is because we have different date settings, yours are American, mine are European. But I prefer "/" to "-" and I tested it. I am glad that "/" works too. The purpose of using the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy/mm/dd is to remove ambiguity (10/09/2006 is 9th Oct to you, it's 10th Sep to me). I prefer the use of the "-" separator because that is part of the ISO standard. I find date functions may be as confusing as SUMPRODUCT(). No, you are just trying to understand properly so that you can use more effectively. Nothing wrong with that. I answered a post on another forum where a guy gave totally misleading information about SUMPRODUCT as if it were gospel. It didn't affect the solution, which worked, but should the OP have tried to take it further, he would really have gotten confused. I don't see that happening to you. And if you think dates are confusing, just pity us developers who work in both markets, catering for all forms can be really challenging. -- HTH Bob Phillips (replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct) |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
Thank you all. This has been very educational. I have a few comments.
Probably the reason 21/4/2008 doesn't work for you is because your regional settings aren't set-up as d/m/y, BUT as m/d/y. Good point, RD. I'm cocatenating the result and that returns a value of 38969 instead of September. If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, what formula do I use in A2 to get 38969. Please advise. =C1&" "&TEXT(A2,"mmmm") If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, I think I can reference A1 directly in the above formula, instead of entering =A1 in A2 and then using A2 in the above formula. The argument: 2/14/2008 is the equivalent of: 2 divided by 14 divided by 2008 which equals: 0.0000711439954467843........Weekday( 0 ) is actually 12/31/1899 which is a Saturday or weekday 7 when the return_type used is 1 or omitted. Don't think I want to agree with this. I key in =WEEKDAY(0) into a cell, I get 7-Jan-00. Don't know why and not sure if we are talking about the same thing. =MONTH(0) yields 1-Jan-1900. In both cases, we never got back to 1899. =WEEKDAY(--"1899/12/31") gives an error #VALUE! which makes sense as the date system starts at 1/1/1900. Talking about 1899 makes me feel very old but all this is very interesting. Please keep the date talk going. Next I have to analyze the formula for "last workday of the current month." This formual is three-line long and uses EOMONTH(). Looks tough. If it gets too confusing, I'll just use it without understanding it. There is a shorter formula but uses "holidays" as part of the syntax. (Holidays is not a function.) Epinn "Bob Phillips" wrote in message ... Hi Epinn, The "--" is exactly the same as its usage in SUMPRODUCT, it is coercing into a numeric. =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") gives #VALUE! =WEEKDAYS(--"4/21/2008") gives 2. As RD says the second version of that works for you, but fails for me is because we have different date settings, yours are American, mine are European. But I prefer "/" to "-" and I tested it. I am glad that "/" works too. The purpose of using the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy/mm/dd is to remove ambiguity (10/09/2006 is 9th Oct to you, it's 10th Sep to me). I prefer the use of the "-" separator because that is part of the ISO standard. I find date functions may be as confusing as SUMPRODUCT(). No, you are just trying to understand properly so that you can use more effectively. Nothing wrong with that. I answered a post on another forum where a guy gave totally misleading information about SUMPRODUCT as if it were gospel. It didn't affect the solution, which worked, but should the OP have tried to take it further, he would really have gotten confused. I don't see that happening to you. And if you think dates are confusing, just pity us developers who work in both markets, catering for all forms can be really challenging. -- HTH Bob Phillips (replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct) |
#16
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
=weekday(d/m/y) or (m/d/y or whatever)
it treats it like a number on mine exactly the same results as if I type =d/m/y ... in a cell and have =weekday(cell) They all act as (a/b)/c for me Now if they were in ""'s that might be different Steve On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 11:43:01 +0100, Epinn wrote: Thank you all. This has been very educational. I have a few comments.. Probably the reason 21/4/2008 doesn't work for you is because your regional settings aren't set-up as d/m/y, BUT as m/d/y. Good point, RD. I'm cocatenating the result and that returns a value of 38969 instead of September. If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, what formula do I use in A2 to get 38969. Please advise. =C1&" "&TEXT(A2,"mmmm") If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, I think I can reference A1 directly in the above formula, instead of entering =A1 in A2 and then using A2 in the above formula. The argument: 2/14/2008 is the equivalent of: 2 divided by 14 divided by 2008 which equals: 0.0000711439954467843........Weekday( 0 ) is actually 12/31/1899 which is a Saturday or weekday 7 when the return_type used is 1 or omitted. Don't think I want to agree with this. I key in =WEEKDAY(0) into a cell, I get 7-Jan-00. Don't know why and not sure if we are talking about the same thing. =MONTH(0) yields 1-Jan-1900. In both cases, we never got back to 1899. =WEEKDAY(--"1899/12/31") gives an error #VALUE! which makes sense as the date system starts at 1/1/1900. Talking about 1899 makes me feel very old but all this is very interesting. Please keep the date talk going. Next I have to analyze the formula for "last workday of the current month." This formual is three-line long and uses EOMONTH(). Looks tough. If it gets too confusing, I'll just use it without understanding it. There is a shorter formula but uses "holidays" as part of the syntax. (Holidays is not a function.) Epinn "Bob Phillips" wrote in message ... Hi Epinn, The "--" is exactly the same as its usage in SUMPRODUCT, it is coercing into a numeric. =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") gives #VALUE! =WEEKDAYS(--"4/21/2008") gives 2. As RD says the second version of that works for you, but fails for me is because we have different date settings, yours are American, mine are European. But I prefer "/" to "-" and I tested it. I am glad that "/" works too. The purpose of using the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy/mm/dd is to remove ambiguity (10/09/2006 is 9th Oct to you, it's 10th Sep to me). I prefer the use of the "-" separator because that is part of the ISO standard. I find date functions may be as confusing as SUMPRODUCT(). No, you are just trying to understand properly so that you can use more effectively. Nothing wrong with that. I answered a post on another forum where a guy gave totally misleading information about SUMPRODUCT as if it were gospel. It didn't affect the solution, which worked, but should the OP have tried to take it further, he would really have gotten confused. I don't see that happening to you. And if you think dates are confusing, just pity us developers who work in both markets, catering for all forms can be really challenging. |
#17
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
Steve,
I heard you. But we were discussing WEEKDAY() *with coercing* i.e. including double negating in the formulae. Do I say it right, Bob? Try to include double negating in both of your formulae and see if you get an error for either one. Like Bob and RD said, the error depends on your date default system for your region. Epinn "SteveW" wrote in message newsp.tflxowdeevjsnp@enigma03... =weekday(d/m/y) or (m/d/y or whatever) it treats it like a number on mine exactly the same results as if I type =d/m/y ... in a cell and have =weekday(cell) They all act as (a/b)/c for me Now if they were in ""'s that might be different Steve On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 11:43:01 +0100, Epinn wrote: Thank you all. This has been very educational. I have a few comments. Probably the reason 21/4/2008 doesn't work for you is because your regional settings aren't set-up as d/m/y, BUT as m/d/y. Good point, RD. I'm cocatenating the result and that returns a value of 38969 instead of September. If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, what formula do I use in A2 to get 38969. Please advise. =C1&" "&TEXT(A2,"mmmm") If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, I think I can reference A1 directly in the above formula, instead of entering =A1 in A2 and then using A2 in the above formula. The argument: 2/14/2008 is the equivalent of: 2 divided by 14 divided by 2008 which equals: 0.0000711439954467843........Weekday( 0 ) is actually 12/31/1899 which is a Saturday or weekday 7 when the return_type used is 1 or omitted. Don't think I want to agree with this. I key in =WEEKDAY(0) into a cell, I get 7-Jan-00. Don't know why and not sure if we are talking about the same thing. =MONTH(0) yields 1-Jan-1900. In both cases, we never got back to 1899. =WEEKDAY(--"1899/12/31") gives an error #VALUE! which makes sense as the date system starts at 1/1/1900. Talking about 1899 makes me feel very old but all this is very interesting. Please keep the date talk going. Next I have to analyze the formula for "last workday of the current month." This formual is three-line long and uses EOMONTH(). Looks tough. If it gets too confusing, I'll just use it without understanding it. There is a shorter formula but uses "holidays" as part of the syntax. (Holidays is not a function.) Epinn "Bob Phillips" wrote in message ... Hi Epinn, The "--" is exactly the same as its usage in SUMPRODUCT, it is coercing into a numeric. =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") gives #VALUE! =WEEKDAYS(--"4/21/2008") gives 2. As RD says the second version of that works for you, but fails for me is because we have different date settings, yours are American, mine are European. But I prefer "/" to "-" and I tested it. I am glad that "/" works too. The purpose of using the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy/mm/dd is to remove ambiguity (10/09/2006 is 9th Oct to you, it's 10th Sep to me). I prefer the use of the "-" separator because that is part of the ISO standard. I find date functions may be as confusing as SUMPRODUCT(). No, you are just trying to understand properly so that you can use more effectively. Nothing wrong with that. I answered a post on another forum where a guy gave totally misleading information about SUMPRODUCT as if it were gospel. It didn't affect the solution, which worked, but should the OP have tried to take it further, he would really have gotten confused. I don't see that happening to you. And if you think dates are confusing, just pity us developers who work in both markets, catering for all forms can be really challenging. |
#18
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
"Epinn" wrote in message ... Thank you all. This has been very educational. I have a few comments. If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, what formula do I use in A2 to get 38969. Please advise. =A1 and format as General. As we said the underlying value of a date is just the number of days since 1st Jan 1900, so it is already that number. You just format it to see it. If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, I think I can reference A1 directly in the above formula, instead of entering =A1 in A2 and then using A2 in the above formula. Correct The argument: 2/14/2008 is the equivalent of: 2 divided by 14 divided by 2008 which equals: 0.0000711439954467843........Weekday( 0 ) is actually 12/31/1899 which is a Saturday or weekday 7 when the return_type used is 1 or omitted. Don't think I want to agree with this. I key in =WEEKDAY(0) into a cell, I get 7-Jan-00. Don't know why and not sure if we are talking about the same thing. You may not want to, but Biff is right. 1st Jan 1900 was a Sunday, the 31st Dec 1899 was a saturday, which is day 7 to WEEKDAY. You get 7-Jan-00 because it is formatted that way, the underlying value is 7. =MONTH(0) yields 1-Jan-1900. In both cases, we never got back to 1899. No, it yields 1. You just have it formatted as a date. A month number is not a date, it is the ordinal value of the month within the year. =WEEKDAY(--"1899/12/31") gives an error #VALUE! which makes sense as the date system starts at 1/1/1900. It does, as Excel "knows" that is not a date in its view of the world, but you can fool it =WEEKDAY(--"1900/01/01"-1) returns 7. Again as Biff, this is another nuance of Excel. Talking about 1899 makes me feel very old but all this is very interesting. Please keep the date talk going. It would be nice if Norman Harker joined the discussion. He has made the study of dates a speciality. Next I have to analyze the formula for "last workday of the current month." This formual is three-line long and uses EOMONTH(). Looks tough. If it gets too confusing, I'll just use it without understanding it. There is a shorter formula but uses "holidays" as part of the syntax. (Holidays is not a function.) How about =WORKDAY(DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),MONTH(TODAY())+1,0),-1) or without the ATP function =DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1)+1,0)-(MAX(0,WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1)+1,0),2) -5)) Epinn "Bob Phillips" wrote in message ... |
#19
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
Yes, without quotes nor double negating, I don't get an error either for both formats.
Epinn "SteveW" wrote in message newsp.tflxowdeevjsnp@enigma03... =weekday(d/m/y) or (m/d/y or whatever) it treats it like a number on mine exactly the same results as if I type =d/m/y ... in a cell and have =weekday(cell) They all act as (a/b)/c for me Now if they were in ""'s that might be different Steve On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 11:43:01 +0100, Epinn wrote: Thank you all. This has been very educational. I have a few comments. Probably the reason 21/4/2008 doesn't work for you is because your regional settings aren't set-up as d/m/y, BUT as m/d/y. Good point, RD. I'm cocatenating the result and that returns a value of 38969 instead of September. If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, what formula do I use in A2 to get 38969. Please advise. =C1&" "&TEXT(A2,"mmmm") If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, I think I can reference A1 directly in the above formula, instead of entering =A1 in A2 and then using A2 in the above formula. The argument: 2/14/2008 is the equivalent of: 2 divided by 14 divided by 2008 which equals: 0.0000711439954467843........Weekday( 0 ) is actually 12/31/1899 which is a Saturday or weekday 7 when the return_type used is 1 or omitted. Don't think I want to agree with this. I key in =WEEKDAY(0) into a cell, I get 7-Jan-00. Don't know why and not sure if we are talking about the same thing. =MONTH(0) yields 1-Jan-1900. In both cases, we never got back to 1899. =WEEKDAY(--"1899/12/31") gives an error #VALUE! which makes sense as the date system starts at 1/1/1900. Talking about 1899 makes me feel very old but all this is very interesting. Please keep the date talk going. Next I have to analyze the formula for "last workday of the current month." This formual is three-line long and uses EOMONTH(). Looks tough. If it gets too confusing, I'll just use it without understanding it. There is a shorter formula but uses "holidays" as part of the syntax. (Holidays is not a function.) Epinn "Bob Phillips" wrote in message ... Hi Epinn, The "--" is exactly the same as its usage in SUMPRODUCT, it is coercing into a numeric. =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") gives #VALUE! =WEEKDAYS(--"4/21/2008") gives 2. As RD says the second version of that works for you, but fails for me is because we have different date settings, yours are American, mine are European. But I prefer "/" to "-" and I tested it. I am glad that "/" works too. The purpose of using the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy/mm/dd is to remove ambiguity (10/09/2006 is 9th Oct to you, it's 10th Sep to me). I prefer the use of the "-" separator because that is part of the ISO standard. I find date functions may be as confusing as SUMPRODUCT(). No, you are just trying to understand properly so that you can use more effectively. Nothing wrong with that. I answered a post on another forum where a guy gave totally misleading information about SUMPRODUCT as if it were gospel. It didn't affect the solution, which worked, but should the OP have tried to take it further, he would really have gotten confused. I don't see that happening to you. And if you think dates are confusing, just pity us developers who work in both markets, catering for all forms can be really challenging. |
#20
|
|||
|
|||
WEEKDAY()
that -- bit was so far down I'd forgotten
Steve On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 12:02:57 +0100, Epinn wrote: Steve, I heard you. But we were discussing WEEKDAY() *with coercing* i.e. including double negating in the formulae. Do I say it right, Bob? Try to include double negating in both of your formulae and see if you get an error for either one. Like Bob and RD said, the error depends on your date default system for your region. Epinn "SteveW" wrote in message newsp.tflxowdeevjsnp@enigma03... =weekday(d/m/y) or (m/d/y or whatever) it treats it like a number on mine exactly the same results as if I type =d/m/y ... in a cell and have =weekday(cell) They all act as (a/b)/c for me Now if they were in ""'s that might be different Steve On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 11:43:01 +0100, Epinn wrote: Thank you all. This has been very educational. I have a few comments. Probably the reason 21/4/2008 doesn't work for you is because your regional settings aren't set-up as d/m/y, BUT as m/d/y. Good point, RD. I'm cocatenating the result and that returns a value of 38969 instead of September. If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, what formula do I use in A2 to get 38969. Please advise. =C1&" "&TEXT(A2,"mmmm") If I key 9/9/2006 into A1, I think I can reference A1 directly in the above formula, instead of entering =A1 in A2 and then using A2 in the above formula. The argument: 2/14/2008 is the equivalent of: 2 divided by 14 divided by 2008 which equals: 0.0000711439954467843........Weekday( 0 ) is actually 12/31/1899 which is a Saturday or weekday 7 when the return_type used is 1 or omitted. Don't think I want to agree with this. I key in =WEEKDAY(0) into a cell, I get 7-Jan-00. Don't know why and not sure if we are talking about the same thing. =MONTH(0) yields 1-Jan-1900. In both cases, we never got back to 1899. =WEEKDAY(--"1899/12/31") gives an error #VALUE! which makes sense as the date system starts at 1/1/1900. Talking about 1899 makes me feel very old but all this is very interesting. Please keep the date talk going. Next I have to analyze the formula for "last workday of the current month." This formual is three-line long and uses EOMONTH(). Looks tough. If it gets too confusing, I'll just use it without understanding it. There is a shorter formula but uses "holidays" as part of the syntax. (Holidays is not a function.) Epinn "Bob Phillips" wrote in message ... Hi Epinn, The "--" is exactly the same as its usage in SUMPRODUCT, it is coercing into a numeric. =WEEKDAY(--"21/4/2008") gives #VALUE! =WEEKDAYS(--"4/21/2008") gives 2. As RD says the second version of that works for you, but fails for me is because we have different date settings, yours are American, mine are European. But I prefer "/" to "-" and I tested it. I am glad that "/" works too. The purpose of using the date in the format yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy/mm/dd is to remove ambiguity (10/09/2006 is 9th Oct to you, it's 10th Sep to me). I prefer the use of the "-" separator because that is part of the ISO standard. I find date functions may be as confusing as SUMPRODUCT(). No, you are just trying to understand properly so that you can use more effectively. Nothing wrong with that. I answered a post on another forum where a guy gave totally misleading information about SUMPRODUCT as if it were gospel. It didn't affect the solution, which worked, but should the OP have tried to take it further, he would really have gotten confused. I don't see that happening to you. And if you think dates are confusing, just pity us developers who work in both markets, catering for all forms can be really challenging. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|