Highlight the Birthdays Due this Month using Excel

You can use Conditional Formatting in Excel to highlight the birthdays in a list that are due this month.

This is very useful if you are responsible for arranging the gifts, cards and possibly events for the birthdays of your office colleagues. The tutorial may also give you ideas of other ways that Conditional Formatting can be used in Excel to bring your attention to important dates.

To highlight the dates that are due this month;

1. Select the dates you want to apply the formatting to



2. Click the Conditional Formatting button on the Home tab
3. Click New Rule from the list
4. Select Use a formula to determine which cells to format
5. Enter the formula below in the box provided

=MONTH(B3)=MONTH(TODAY())

The formula uses the MONTH function to extract the month number from the cell B3 (the first cell in the list selected) and the month from the TODAY function, which is used to return today's date.

It then checks to see if the month numbers are equal. If they are then the birthday must happen this month and the required cells are formatted. If not, they are left alone.

6. Click the Format button and choose the formatting you want to apply
7. Click Ok

The formatting will be applied to the selected cells. Each month Excel will format the required cells for the birthdays that are due that month.

Watch the highlight this months birthdays in Excel video tutorial.

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