Basically..... I have 10,000 columns of data each defined by the month they
are in with the month name November, December etc. I have a list of the
months in a drop down menu which when selected will give the amount of data
for that month. I am trying to give a year to date value which will calculate
the month and the months prior to the month selected but I can not do this.

"Bernard Liengme" wrote:

Not sure I understand problem but does this help
=LOOKUP(A1,{"Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr"},{1,2,3,4})
If A1 has value Feb this returns number 2, etc
I got tired of typing so add more months
best wishes

--
Bernard V Liengme
Microsoft Excel MVP
http://people.stfx.ca/bliengme
remove caps from email

"DaveKid" wrote in message
...
Hi, I am wokring on a spreadsheet which gives the month name in a drop
down
list to select. This drop down box is then linked to another cell which
reads
is contents to give the value dependent on which month is chosen, however,
I
have a problem in that excel cannot read the month as a value. How do I
overcome this?