Hi - Dave here.

Happy Friday!

The GROUPBY function makes generating monthly totals pretty easy. In the worksheet below, the formula in cell G5 looks like this:

=GROUPBY(TEXT(data[Date],"mmm"),data[Total],SUM)

This formula works nicely. You can see that we get a clean breakdown by month for the first six months of 2025. However, there is a problem. Notice that the month names do not appear in chronological order. Instead, they are sorted alphabetically. This is because the GROUPBY function sorts grouped values in alphabetical order by default:

Example image.

[Download the workbook and read the full explanation]

How can we get Excel to sort the months in the correct order? This turns out to be tricky. However, it's a nice example of a problem where the field_relationship argument in GROUPBY is needed. Click the link above for a full teardown and explanation.

Note: GROUPBY requires Excel 365. However, I've included a SUMPRODUCT solution on the second sheet that will work in any Excel version. Is the SUMPRODUCT formula simpler? Yes, maybe. You be the judge ðŸ™‚

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Have a great weekend!

Dave

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