Highlight dates in the same month and year

Excel has a built-in conditional formatting rule that will highlight dates that occur "this month". But what if you want to highlight dates in the same month and year for any date? In other words: Given a date, what formula will highlight other dates in the same month and year? What formula would you use to apply conditional formatting? Please post your answers in the comments section below. Like so many things in Excel, there are *many* ways to solve this problem. Need some ideas or inspiration? You can find Excel's date functions here. There's a practice file attached below so you can easily try out your ideas. Remember that conditional formatting rules need to return TRUE (or equivalent) to trigger formatting. In the example above, cell E2 is named "date" for convenience.

April 14, 2025 · 1 min · 97 words · Amanda Horton

Excel has a built-in conditional formatting rule that will highlight dates that occur “this month”.

But what if you want to highlight dates in the same month and year for any date?

Like so many things in Excel, there are many ways to solve this problem.

Final conditional formatting

Need some ideas or inspiration?

you could find Excel’s date functionshere.

There’s a practice file attached below so you’re free to easily try out your ideas.

Final conditional formatting

Remember that conditional formatting rules need to return TRUE (or equivalent) to trigger formatting.

In the example above, cell E2 is named “date” for convenience.

Final conditional formatting