Custom weekday abbreviation

We can use the CHOOSE and WEEKDAY functions to make custom weekday abbreviations in any style we desire. We may want to, for example, format the days of the week to be abbreviated by the first letter or the first two letters. The steps below will walk through the process of creating weekday abbreviations.

Figure 1- Result of creating custom weekday abbreviations

General Formula

=CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(date),"S","M","T","W","T","F","S")

Formula

=CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(B5),"S","M","T","W","T","F","S")

Setting up the Data

• We will create our data titled “Date” in Column B
• Column C is where we will insert the formula to arrive with the Weekday result.

Figure 2- Setting up the Data

Applying the CHOOSE and WEEKDAY functions

• We will click on Cell C5
• We will insert the formula below into Cell C5
  =CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(B5),"S","M","T","W","T","F","S")
• We press the enter key

Figure 3- Applying the CHOOSE and WEEKDAY functions

• We will click on Cell C5 again
• Using the fill handle tool found at the bottom-right of Cell C5, we will drag and copy the formula into the other cells.

Figure 4- Result of using the CHOOSE/WEEKDAY formula to create custom weekday abbreviations

Explanation

We use the CHOOSE and WEEKDAY functions together to customize the abbreviations of the days of the week in a way that suits us. In the illustrations above, we customized the days of the week to a single letter abbreviation.

• =WEEKDAY(B5)

The WEEKDAY function simply takes a date and returns with a number between 1 and 7. By default, 1 represents Sunday, while 7 represents Saturday.

• =CHOOSE(B5,“S","M","T","W","T","F","S")

The CHOOSE function matches the number extracted by using the WEEKDAY function to their corresponding positions in the days of the week and returns with the follow-up arguments in that regard as specified by the list of abbreviations contained within the CHOOSE formula.

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