Much of the world doesn’t start calendar weeks on Sunday, so whether your week starts on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday, you have the option to customize the first day of the week for your docs. This customization will affect how calendars and timelines are rendered. It will also affect some formulas. Read on to learn more.

📣 If you want to learn how to set custom working days or holidays in your doc, check out this article.

Set custom first day for all future docs

If you want all your future Coda docs you create to reflect your custom first day of the week, just follow these steps:

Go to coda.io/account
Within the New document defaults section, find the First day of the week setting
Use the dropdown to select your default first day of the week (options are Sunday, Monday, Friday, Saturday)

That’s it. All docs you create from now on will stick to this default setting. Note that this won't apply retroactively to existing docs. Follow the steps below to modify existing docs.

Set custom first day for existing docs

If you want set a custom first day of the week for existing docs or any specific docs, follow these steps:

Open the doc you want to modify
Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner
Click on the Region and dates option
Under the Region tab, you’ll see a First day of the week setting. Use the dropdown to choose your customization. Options include Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Now you will see your new first day of the week updated in other areas of your doc, such as date pickers, date controls, calendars, and timelines.

Implications for formulas

Coda has several formulas related to workweeks and weekdays. These formulas will respect the first day of the week setting for the doc. Here are some details about specific formulas:

The Weekday(), WeekNumber(), and DateTimeTruncate(date,"week") formulas now respect the new setting.
WeekNumber() always considers the first week of the year to contain Jan 1. Continue to use IsoWeekNumber() for the convention where the first week of the year includes the first Thursday of the year, and the first day of the week is Monday.
We’ve also added IsoWeekday() which always considers Monday the first day of the week, regardless of doc setting.

FAQs

Do I have to set custom first day of the week each doc individually?

For all existing docs, you will have to set the custom first day of the week on a doc-by-doc basis. Follow the steps in the section above for details.

For all future docs you create, you can use your account settings to customize the first day of the week. All docs you create from that point forward will automatically reflect this customization.

How are first day of the week and custom working days different?

The first day of the week setting tells Coda which day of the week your calendar should start on. For instance, the calendar week may start on Sunday in certain parts of the world, or it may start on Monday in other regions. Or maybe you and your team just have your own system that works for you. The first day of the week setting will affect the rendering of calendars, timelines, and date picker controls. It will also affect some Coda formulas (check out the Implications for formulas subsection above).

The custom working days setting, on the other hand, tells Coda which days your team does and does not work each week (regardless of which first day of the week you prefer). This setting can be enforced in timelines and dependencies, so that tasks cannot start or end on non-workdays. It also affects the NetWorkingDays() and Workday() formulas. Check out this article for more info.