Excel DAY Function — How to Use It (with 3 Examples)

Contents

What does DAY do?

DAY pulls out just the day-of-month portion of a date — turning June 22, 2026 into simply 22.

It is most useful inside formulas that need to test or compare specific calendar days, like flagging anything due on the last day of the month.

=DAY(date)

Argument	Description
date required	A date value or a cell containing one.

Example 1

Extract the day from a date

=DAY(A2)

If A2 is June 22, 2026, returns 22.

Example 2

Flag the first of the month

=IF(DAY(A2)=1,"First day","Other")

Checks whether a date falls on the 1st of its month.

Example 3

Find the last day of a month

=DAY(EOMONTH(A2,0))

Combines DAY with EOMONTH to find how many days are in the month A2 falls in.

⚠️ Confusing DAY with WEEKDAY

DAY returns the day-of-month number (1-31). WEEKDAY returns which day of the week it is (1-7).

Does DAY work with text dates?

Only if Excel recognizes the text as a real date already — otherwise convert it first with DATEVALUE.

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YEAR WEEKDAY EOMONTH