Home » Excel-Built-In-Functions » Excel-Date-And-Time-Functions » Excel-Month-Function Search this site: Custom Search

Related Functions : DAY Function YEAR Function DATE Function

Basic Description

The Excel MONTH function, when supplied with a date, returns an integer representing the month of the year (from 1 - 12).

The format of the function is :

where the Date argument can be supplied to the function as either :

• A references to cells containing dates

or

• A date returned from another formula or function

Warning: If you attempt to input the Date argument as text, there is a chance that Excel may misinterpret this due to different date systems, or date interpretation settings.

Also, although you can input the Date as a serial number, this is not recommended as the serial numbers may vary across different computer systems.

Example

The following example shows the function used to extract the month from 3 different dates. The spreadsheet on the left shows the format of the function and the spreadsheet on the right shows the results for the 3 dates.

Note that, in the above examples, as recommended by Microsoft, the date value is always supplied as either a reference to a cell containing a date, or as a value returned from another function.

Further examples of the Excel Month function can be found on the Microsoft Office website.

Common Error With the Excel Month Function

The Month Function In VBA

The Month function is also a built-in function in VBA (used for writing Excel Macros).

Within VBA, the function takes exactly the same format as when used in an Excel spreadsheet:

For example:

Const CurrDate = "29/11/2009" Dim MthNum As Integer MthNum = Month(CurrDate)

After running the above snippet of VBA code, the variable 'MthNum' holds the value 11, which represents the month from the date "29/11/2009" (where the date "29/11/2009" is in the English format dd/mm/yyyy).