formula result=Volatile

[Guest]

I have contact birthday information in column K and each member of a family
in different rows (for this family it's rows 13-15) and the anniversary is in
cell L13 in this example. I use the following formula to show me if anyone
has a celebration due during the current month (month(now()) and I get funny
results. When I click on the Fx feature, I get the logical test and the
formula result=volatile. I'm trying to see if any one of the 3 have a
birthday in this month, or if the paretns have an anniversary in this month,
then show the words "this month" in my formula column (column a) but one
formula per family. Can you see what I'm doing wrong?

=IF(OR(MONTH(K13)=MONTH(NOW()),MONTH(L13)=MONTH(NOW()),MONTH(K14)=MONTH(NOW()),MONTH(K15)=MONTH(NOW())),"THIS MONTH","")

I'm using Excel 2003, windows XP if you needed this. It had been working
but going from Dec to Jan seems to have done something.

 

[Guest]

Replace NOW() with TODAY()

 

[T. Valko]

Replace NOW() with TODAY()

That's like "6 of one, half dozen of the other".

When I click on the Fx feature, I get the logical test and the
formula result=volatile.

That is not a problem. That just means you're using a volatile function,
NOW(). A volatile function calculates every time some event triggers a
calculation. You'll get the same result whether you use NOW() or TODAY().
Both of those functions are volatile.

What you could do is use a helper cell to get the current month and then
refer to that cell instead of repeating a volatile function in the formula:

=IF(OR(MONTH(K13)=MONTH(NOW()),MONTH(L13)=MONTH(NOW()),MONTH(K14)=MONTH(NOW()),MONTH(K15)=MONTH(NOW())),"THIS
MONTH","")

A1: =MONTH(NOW()) or =MONTH(TODAY())

Then your formula becomes:

=IF(OR(MONTH(K13)=A1,MONTH(L13)=A1,MONTH(K14)=A1,MONTH(K15)=A1),"THIS
MONTH","")

Biff