Highlighting a Column with Conditional Formatting Based on Entered Date

[francoiscj1]

I am working on an Excel spreadsheet where the user can enter a date in A4 (Ex. September 2017). My column titles have abbreviated months (Ex. Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.) and begin from B7:M7. ​

What I would like to do is have a column highlighted with conditional formatting when the text in A4 equals the abbreviated month.

(Ex. September 2017 = Sep).​

 

[FDibbins]

question...

the user can enter a date in A4 (Ex. September 2017).

Is that exactly the format that will be entered - a month name and a year, with no days?

Keep in mind that unless you enter a REAL date 12/25/2017 etc, then you are actually entering text, not a date.
What you need to understand about dates and times in excel is…

a date is just a number representing the number of days passed since 1/1/900...and then formatted in a way that we recognize as a date. So, for instance, today (Sun 12 Nov 2017) is actually 43051

Time is actually a decimal part of 1 (day), so 06:00 AM is 0.25, 12 noon is 0.5 and 18:00 (or 6 PM) is 0.75