Highlight Current Month Birthdays in Excel

August seems to be a very popular birthday month among my Excel friends. I won't mention any names here, because most of them are quite elderly, and the shock might upset them. ;-) Anyway, to all of them, and you, if you're celebrating this month -- happy birthday!

The Birthday List

If you're in charge of an employee list, and have to send birthday greetings, or hiring date anniversary congratulations, you can use Excel to help you keep track.

In the worksheet shown below, there are fictitious employee names and birthdates. In a separate column you could use the MONTH function to check which birthdates are in the current month.

This formula compares the month of the date in column C, to the month of today's date. If the months are the same, the result is TRUE.

=MONTH(C2)=MONTH(TODAY())

Highlight Birthdays with Conditional Formatting

Instead of adding another column with formulas, you could use conditional formatting to highlight the current month's dates in column C.

To highlight the dates:

• Select all the dates in column C. In this example, cell C2 is the active cell.
  
• On the Ribbon's Home tab, click Conditional Formatting
  
• Click New Rule
  
• In the New Formatting Rule dialog box, click on Use a Formula to Determine Which Cells to Format
  
• In the Format box, type the formula to compare months:
  

  =MONTH(C2)=MONTH(TODAY())
  

  
  
• Click the Format button, and select the formatting you want for the highlighted cell. In this example, the cells will be filled with light blue.

• Click OK to apply the conditional formatting.

Spot the Birthdays

On the worksheet, all the birthdays from the current month are highlighted with the formatting that you selected. When you open the file at the start of each month, you'll quickly spot all the people who are celebrating birthdays.

__________________