MONTH

Microsoft Office Excel 2003

See Also

Returns the month of a date represented by a serial number. The month is given as an integer, ranging from 1 (January) to 12 (December).

Syntax

MONTH(serial_number)

Serial_number    is the date of the month you are trying to find. Dates should be entered by using the DATE function, or as results of other formulas or functions. For example, use DATE(2008,5,23) for the 23rd day of May, 2008. Problems can occur if dates are entered as text.

Remarks

Microsoft Excel stores dates as sequential serial numbers so they can be used in calculations. By default, January 1, 1900 is serial number 1, and January 1, 2008 is serial number 39448 because it is 39,448 days after January 1, 1900. Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh uses a different date system as its default.

Values returned by the YEAR, MONTH and DAY functions will be Gregorian values regardless of the display format for the supplied date value. For example, if the display format of the supplied date is Hijri, the returned values for the YEAR, MONTH and DAY functions will be values associated with the equivalent Gregorian date.

Example

The example may be easier to understand if you copy it to a blank worksheet.

ShowHow?

  1. Create a blank workbook or worksheet.
  2. Select the example in the Help topic. Do not select the row or column headers.

    Selecting an example from Help

    Selecting an example from Help

  3. Press CTRL+C.
  4. In the worksheet, select cell A1, and press CTRL+V.
  5. To switch between viewing the results and viewing the formulas that return the results, press CTRL+` (grave accent), or on the Tools menu, point to Formula Auditing, and then click Formula Auditing Mode.
 
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Date
15-Apr-2008
Formula Description (Result)
=MONTH(A2) Month of the date above (4)