Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: ISO Week Numbers in Excel.

ISO Week Numbers in Excel

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 5, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Excel provides a function that can be used to calculate the week number, of the year, of any given date. How you can use the WEEKNUM function has been recounted in other ExcelTips. There are some methods of determining weeks where the WEEKNUM function won't do, however. For instance, you may need to find the week number based on the ISO method of calculating weeks.

In the ISO scheme of things, weeks are calculated based upon the start of the week being Monday. Not so tough, right? However, the first week of the year is defined as beginning on the Monday of the week in which the first Thursday of January occurs. Whoa! This means that the first week of the year can actually begin on Monday, December 29, of the preceding year and it is possible that the last week of the preceding year can end as late as Sunday, January 3, of the current year.

This is too much for WEEKNUM to handle. Instead, you will need to use a formula to calculate the ISO week number for the year:

=INT((A1-DATE(YEAR(A1-WEEKDAY(A1-1)+4),1,3)+
WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(A1-WEEKDAY(A1-1)+4),1,3))+5)/7)

If you need more information on the how to handle ISO week numbers and dates in Excel, refer to these sources:

http://www.rondebruin.nl/win/s8/win002.htm
http://www.cpearson.com/Excel/WeekNumbers.aspx

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (7844) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: ISO Week Numbers in Excel.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Clean Up Your Macro List

Macros are part of the document and template that are loaded into memory when you open a file. If you have "junk" macros ...

Discover More

Saving Non-Existent Changes

Open a workbook, look at the data, start to close the workbook, and you are asked if you want to save your changes. What ...

Discover More

Determining a Worksheet's Number

When you add a new worksheet to a workbook, it receives a meaningful name such as "Sheet4" or "Sheet17." If you want to ...

Discover More

Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 2013 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access) with VBA programming, using it for writing macros, automating Office applications, and creating custom applications. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2013 today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Every Second Tuesday

Need a way to enter dates from every second Tuesday (or some other regular interval)? Excel makes it easy, providing ...

Discover More

Calculating an Age On a Given Date

Start putting dates in a worksheet (especially birthdates), and sooner or later you will need to calculate an age based ...

Discover More

Inserting Tomorrow's Date

You can use a couple of different worksheet functions to enter today's date in a cell. What if you want to calculate ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is six minus 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.