Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Changing Months in a Workbook.

Changing Months in a Workbook

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 12, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021


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It is not unusual to keep track of monthly information, of one sort or another, in a workbook. You might be tracking expenses, sales, inventory movements, stock prices, or any of a thousand other things. When you start a new month, you may make a copy of the previous month's workbook and then look for a way to make changes to the month name that appears in various places in the newly created copy.

If the month name you want to change is stored as text within various worksheets, you can use Excel's find and replace feature to make the changes. Just follow these steps:

  1. Click on the tab of the first worksheet in which you want to make changes.
  2. Hold down the Shift key as you click on the tab of the last worksheet in which you want to make changes. All of the worksheets you want to change should now be selected.
  3. Press Ctrl+H to display the Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
  4. In the Find What box, enter the old month's name.
  5. In the Replace With box, enter the new month's name.
  6. Click on Replace All.
  7. Close the Find and Replace dialog box.

If these steps do not change a particular month name as it appears in your workbook, it could be because the month name is not actually text, but a date value formatted to show only the month. In that case, you cannot use Find and Replace; instead you must simply change the date value stored in the cell.

If you want a quick way to change the month names in the worksheet tabs, that is a bit trickier. Excel's find and replace feature won't find or replace the text in tab names. Normally they need to be done by hand, but if you have many of them, you may want to create a macro that will do the changing for you. The following macro prompts you for the text you are searching for and the text you want to replace it with. Then, it steps through each worksheet tab and makes the changes for you.

Sub TabReplace()
    Dim sFind As String
    Dim sReplace As String
    Dim s As Object

    sFind = InputBox("Text to find?")
    sReplace = InputBox("Replace it with?")

    If (sFind & sReplace) > "" Then
        For Each s In Sheets
            s.Name = Replace(s.Name, sFind, sReplace)
        Next s
    End If
End Sub

This macro will run very quickly, but it certainly isn't foolproof. It is very possible that the user could enter illegal characters in either what is being searched for or what it is being replaced with. If you decide to use a macro like this often, you'll want to modify it to test what the user enters.

Even though the steps (and macro) presented here can make the job of updating your workbook easier, it may be easier still to simply rethink how you do your workbook. It may be easier to set up a cell to contain the current month's name, and then reference that name in the appropriate cells throughout the workbook. Then, all you need to do is change the month name in a single cell, and it will be changed elsewhere, automatically. In other ExcelTips you even learned how you can dynamically change a tab name based on the contents of a particular cell.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12275) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Changing Months in a Workbook.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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Comments

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What is 6 - 0?

2022-11-14 04:01:49

sandeep kothari

Thanks Woolley for replying to my query.


2022-11-13 23:20:14

Michael van der Riet

I have a Date tab in my ManAcc workbook. I input the month end date of the active month. From that I get month name in various formats, first day of financial year, last day of financial year, same month last year, etc. etc. It's a good idea to keep global parameters on their own tab.


2022-11-13 09:50:35

J. Woolley

@sandeep kothari
For Each s In Sheets
Sheets is a superset of Worksheets and Charts. You might declare s As Sheet, but there is no Sheet object. Since you don't know whether s will be Worksheet or Chart, you must declare s As Object (general) or As Variant (default).


2022-11-13 06:04:49

sandeep kothari

How does VBA ascertain that the object variable declared as s is worksheet tab name? There are so many objects, like range, workbook, chart etc.


2022-11-12 07:14:05

Tom Santi

Great tip. I just wanted to add that you can combine a cell reference containing a date into otherwise static text to update dates each month. For example, when I was settling my Mom's estate, I had to send certain accountings to the beneficiaries. In the accountings, there were a of lot rows with text and then a date. For example, "Vanguard Account Balance as of November 30, 2015". I didn't want to change all the dates manually each month. So using the & commands, I could get all the dates to update each month by putting the date in a single field. In the example below, cell A1 contains 'November 30, 2015.

The formula is ="Vanguard Account Balance as of"&" "&$A$1. It returns Vanguard Account Balance as of November 30, 2015


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