A Tip for Microsoft Excel Addicts - Extract A Month's Name From A Date

December 6, 2016

Hi fellow Excel Addict,

It's REALLY COLD outside today (-5°C/26°F). I've had to go outside a couple of times today but I didn't enjoy it one little bit. Rosemary doesn't seem to be bothered by the cold. But Basil has decided not to stick around for the winter.

I know there are places where it's much colder than here but this such a change from the temps (20°C/68°F) we had just two weeks ago. It's only a couple of weeks to the beginning of winter in Canada so it's probably a little too early to start complaining.

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Did you check out Mynda's free Excel Dashboard Webinars that I told you about last week? If not and you’re quick, you may be able to catch the last day of the webinar (I think it's today) by clicking here.

In today's 'Excel in Seconds' tip, I'm going to show you 'Extract A Month's Name From A Date'.

If you missed last Thursday's 'Excel in Minutes' tip, 'Count Cells That Include Specific Text', you can read it here now.

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Hope you're having a great week and keep on Excelling,
Francis Hayes (The Excel Addict)
Email: fhayes[AT]TheExcelAddict.com

Francis Hayes (TheExcelAddict.com)

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Extract A Month's Name From A Date

If you have a list of dates and you want to show just the month's full name, here are couple of options.

Apply a custom number format

On the Home tab, click the small arrow on the bottom right corner of the Number group to open the Format Cells dialog. Alternatively, you can press CTRL+1 to bring up the Format Cells dialog. On the Number tab, click Custom in the Categories section and type mmmm in the Type field and click OK. This will display the full name of the month in the cell.

Format Date As Month Name in Microsoft Excel 2007 2010 2013 2016 365

If you want to display the abbreviated month name (e.g. Jan, Feb, etc...), type mmm in the Type field instead.

Use the TEXT function

If you need to create a separate column of the month names, the TEXT function makes this easy.

In an adjacent column, enter the formula =TEXT(B3,"mmmm") for the first date and copy it down. This will return the month's full name as a text string. If you want to convert these to fixed values, select the cells with the formulas and drag them using the right mouse button. When you drop them, a menu will pop up from which you can choose Paste Here as Values Only.

Extract Month Name From Date in Microsoft Excel 2007 2010 2013 2016 365

You've probably already figured out that if you want an abbreviated month name, you should use mmm in the formula. Also try other combinations of d=day, m=month and y=year (i.e. mmmm d, yyyy) in both the custom date format and the TEXT function.

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