Date & Time
Get day name from a date: locale-safe weekday labels with WEEKDAY and CHOOSE
Turn any calendar date into "Monday".."Sunday" or "Mon".."Sun" using WEEKDAY(date, 2) + CHOOSE so formulas never break across locales.
Why CHOOSE + WEEKDAY beats locale-dependent TEXT("dddd")
TEXT(A2, "dddd") depends on regional format codes—on a German or French system "dddd" can fail or output "Mittwoch" / "mercredi", breaking downstream SUMIFS(Hours, DayName, "Wednesday") formulas!
Passing return_type = 2 to WEEKDAY(A2, 2) always maps Monday -> 1 through Sunday -> 7 regardless of system language, and CHOOSE maps 1..7 to the exact strings your workbook expects.
| ShiftDate (A) | WEEKDAY(A, 2) | Full Day Name | Short Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-15 | 3 | Wednesday | Wed |
| 2026-04-19 | 7 | Sunday | Sun |
Return full or abbreviated day names reliably
April 15, 2026 is day 3 of the ISO Monday-Sunday week ("Wednesday").
=CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(A2, 2), "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday")Compact 3-letter weekday lookup with INDEX
INDEX({"Mon","Tue","Wed","Thu","Fri","Sat","Sun"}, WEEKDAY(A2, 2)) returns "Wed" in an even shorter expression.
=INDEX({"Mon","Tue","Wed","Thu","Fri","Sat","Sun"}, WEEKDAY(A2, 2))Try the example
Use the original values or change them to test your understanding.