How to get the month name from a date with TEXT

This turns a date into its month name, so you can group or label rows by January, February and so on.

The formula

=TEXT(A2,"mmmm") in column C

What each part does

"mmmm"
Full month name. Use "mmm" for the short form.

How it works, and what to watch for

TEXT with "mmmm" gives the full month name; "mmm" gives the short one. The date underneath is untouched, so it still sorts correctly.

The result is text, which is fine for labels but means it will sort alphabetically, not January-to-December, if you sort by it.

To group by month and year together, "mmmm yyyy" keeps different years apart.

Questions

Will this mess up my date sorting?

The original date is unchanged, so sort by that. The month name is a label sitting alongside, and sorting by it would order the months alphabetically.

How do I get just the month number?

Use MONTH(A2) for a plain 1 to 12.

The example sheet

Order date Amount Month
2026-01-14 900
2026-03-02 1250
2026-03-28 610

If this helped, these are close by

More on TEXT, and every walkthrough that uses it.

Formula Steps Watch how Excel formulas are built. Download the sheet.

Settings: separator, Excel version

Argument separator

Set by your computer's language, not by the file. A frequent cause of a correct-looking formula being rejected.

Excel version

XLOOKUP, IFS, TEXTBEFORE and TEXTJOIN need Microsoft 365 or 2021; older versions return #NAME? instead. Choosing the older one switches every walkthrough to a formula that works there.