Again it is because the underlying values of dates are just numbers. As I
said to Epinn, the value stored in a date of 21/4/2008 is 39559.

Now when you do a =MONTH(A1) in A2, you are not really returning a date, but
a simple month number (9 in the case quoted). But, because it is a number,
if you do date type things on it, Excel will not complain, it will just work
on whatever date that number resolves to. As a date is stored as the number
of days since 1st January 1900, the value of 9 will be treated as 9th Jan
1900, so if you format it as mmmm, you get January. Format it as dd/mm/yyyy,
and see what I mean.

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

(replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct)

"MartinW" wrote in message
...
Hi Bob,

Can you also explain another one along similar lines.
If I put todays date 09/09/2006 in A1.
Then in A2 I put =MONTH(A1) and I get 9 which is good.
I then format A2 as mmmm and I get January. What gives??

Confused
Martin