Another Excel function can extend this idea a little. We could use the MONTH () function to extract the month number from a date, and refer our OFFSET () formula to the cell that contains the MONTH () ...

The OFFSET function is probably my favorite function in Excel. When you understand OFFSET you will start dragging the auto-fill handle harder than my uncle Jeff drags on the weekends.

This should not put you off using OFFSET; it is a function that frequently calculates much quicker than the alternative options and its advantages may often outweigh the potential pitfalls. It’s such ...

Excel has over 475 formulas in its Functions Library, but we've selected the most popular, from date and time functions to mathematics and simple data manipulation.