How to get the month name from a date
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Turn a date into its month name, like "July", for reports and labels.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =TEXT(A2,"mmmm") | "mmm" gives the short form (Jul). |
| Google Sheets | =TEXT(A2,"mmmm") | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =TEXT(A2,"MMMM") | LibreOffice format codes are case-insensitive here; "mmmm" also works. |
How it works
TEXT formats a value using a format code: "mmmm" is the full month name, "mmm" the abbreviation, and "mm" the two-digit month number. The result is text, so it stays put when sorted or concatenated. Month names follow the spreadsheet's language setting — on a French locale you'd get "juillet".
Verified, not just documented
We ran =TEXT(DATE(2026,7,20),"MMMM") in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned July — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned July for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.
Functions used
TEXT — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.
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