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Excel Tips and Tricks: Text Function in Excel

Posted by Robert Baran on Fri, Jul 20, 2012 @ 03:36 PM

Excel Tips and Tricks / Business Reporting Question: Given that I have a column of dates in values in my report, how can one only show the name of the months and can this be done in Microsoft Excel?

Answer: Yes, by using the text function in Excel

Why: The Text function coverts a value to text in a specific number format

Applies To MS Excel 2003, 2007, 2010

1.  Refer to the data in the Excel worksheet as given in the example below.

Excel Tips and Tricks

2. Select C3.

3. Type;=Text(C3,”MMMM”).

4. Press enter and copy the formula down.

5. The result will be as in the screen shot below.

Excel Tips and Tricks

You can also use the following formula if you would like a shorter text format.

Type;=Text(C3,”MMM”) 

This would give the result Jan, Feb, Mar for example.

As can be seen above the name of the months have been extracted. Analysis in terms of how much sales were made in each month can easily be done now.

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Topics: Business Reporting, Excel Tips and Tricks