Date & Time
Get month name from a date: locale-safe full and 3-letter labels
Extract English full ("April") or abbreviated ("Apr") month names reliably across locales with CHOOSE and MONTH.
Why CHOOSE(MONTH(date), ...) avoids regional TEXT("mmmm") surprises
In desktop spreadsheets, TEXT(A2, "mmmm") changes spelling based on the viewer's Windows or macOS regional setting ("April", "Avril", "Abril")—breaking downstream SUMIFS or XLOOKUP formulas that match English month headers.
Indexing MONTH(A2) (1 through 12) directly into CHOOSE returns deterministic month labels on every machine and browser.
These explicit labels are English; replace the list for another language. Month names alone combine different years, so include the year or use a numeric month-start date when grouping multi-year data. Three-character abbreviations are an English display convention.
| EventDate (A) | MONTH(A) | Full Month Name | 3-Letter + Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-18 | 4 | April | Apr 2026 |
| 2026-09-05 | 9 | September | Sep 2026 |
Full month name and abbreviated Month-Year label
Wrap CHOOSE(...) in LEFT(..., 3) & " " & YEAR(A2) to build compact chart axis labels like "Apr 2026".
=CHOOSE(MONTH(A2), "January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December")3-letter month-year label formula
September 5, 2026 produces "Sep 2026".
=LEFT(CHOOSE(MONTH(A3), "January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"), 3) & " " & YEAR(A3)Try the example
Use the original values or change them to test your understanding.