Summary

If you need to extract the month from a date, you can use the MONTH function. In the generic form of the formula above, the date must be in a form that Excel recognizes as a valid date.

Generic formula

=MONTH(date)

Explanation 

The MONTH function takes just one argument, the date from which to extract the month. In the example shown, the formula is:

=MONTH(B4)

where B4 contains the date January 5, 2016. The MONTH function returns the number 1 representing the month( January) of the date. Note that you can use MONTH to extract the month from a day entered as text:

=MONTH("1/5/2016")

However, using text for dates can produce unpredictable results on computers using different regional date settings. It's better (and more flexible) to supply an address to a cell that already contains a valid date.

Get month name

To extract the month name from a date, you can use the TEXT function, as described in this example.

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Dave Bruns

Hi - I'm Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.