How do you write an Excel formula that checks if the month is January and returns a specific value?

To write an Excel formula that checks if the month is January and returns a specific value, you can use the IF and MONTH functions. The IF function allows you to set a condition, and the MONTH function extracts the month from a specified date. By combining these functions, you can create a formula that checks if the month is equal to January and returns the desired value if the condition is met. This formula can be used in various scenarios, such as calculating monthly bonuses or tracking seasonal trends in data. It is a useful tool for automating tasks and making data analysis more efficient and accurate.

Excel Formula: If Month is January Then


You can use the following IF function in Excel to return a specific value if the month in a given cell is January:

=IF(MONTH(A2)=1, "Yes", "No")

For this formula, if the month of the date in cell A2 is January then this function returns “Yes.”

Otherwise it returns “No.”

The following example shows how to use this function in practice.

Example: Excel Formula to Check If Month is January

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the total sales made on various dates at some company:

We can type the following formula into cell C2 to check if the date in cell A2 is in January and return “Yes” or “No” as a result:

=IF(MONTH(A2)=1, "Yes", "No")

We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column C:

Excel formula if date is January then

Column C now contains “Yes” or “No” to indicate if the month in each date in column A is January or not.

How This Formula Works

Recall the formula we used to check if the month of the date in cell A2 is January:

=IF(MONTH(A2)=1, "Yes", "No")

Here is how this formula works:

If a date in a particular cell is in January, then the MONTH function will return 1.

By using MONTH(A2)=1 we return TRUE or FALSE to indicate if the month in a specific date is in January.

We then use a simple IF function to return “Yes” if the result is TRUE or “No” if the result is FALSE.

Note: You can easily modify this formula to check if a given date contains a different month.

For example, you could use the following formula to return “Yes” or “No” to indicate if a given date contains “October” as the month:

=IF(MONTH(A2)=10, "Yes", "No")

Feel free to use whichever integer value you’d like in the formula depending on which month you’d like to use.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel:

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