Change dates to non-numeric text

[Don Niall]

Is there an effective way to convert dates to non-
numeric 'general text', so that a date formated as 'MMM'
will appear in text as Feb (for example), while a date
formatted as 'YYYY' will appear as 2004 (another example).
I am working with a pivot table - but am getting multiple
same year entries in a layout pull-down menu? Ecen though
I have formatted the dates as MMM and YYYY respectively I
note that if I click on the cell the dates still appear in
the conventional DD/MMM/YYYY format? I think this is
causing my problem ...

Don-

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi Don
try
=TEXT(A1,"MMMM")
or
=TEXT(A1,"YYYY")

to convert the date in A1 to a specific text
Frank

 

[Paul]

An alternative approach is to generate the pivot table directly from the
dates and then group by month and/or year within the pivot table. This has
three advantages:
Firstly, it does not require a separate column for the conversion to text.
Secondly, it maintains the chronological ordering of months.
Thirdly, it enables months in different years to be handled sensibly.