Month function

This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the MONTH function in Microsoft Excel.

Description

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)

The MONTH function syntax has the following arguments:

• Serial_number    Required. 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.

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

Copy the example data in the following table, and paste it in cell A1 of a new Excel worksheet. For formulas to show results, select them, press F2, and then press Enter. If you need to, you can adjust the column widths to see all the data.

Date
15-Apr-11
Formula	Description	Result
=MONTH(A2)	Month of the date in cell A2	4

See Also

DATE function

Add or subtract dates

Date and time functions (reference)