Excel formula: Get month from date

Generic formula

=MONTH(date)

Explanation

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.

Here's how the formula works:

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

=MONTH(B4)

B4 contains a date value for January 5, 2016. The MONTH function returns the number 1 representing the month( January) of the date. If you need to get the month name instead of the month number, see Get the month name from a 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. In general it's better (and more flexible) to supply an address to a cell that already contains a valid date.

Author

Dave Bruns

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