represent date in text

Hi,
I am trying to represent date in
Jan-11
Feb-11
and so on...(I am manually typing this dates)

only limitation is Actually it should be same not 1/1/11...
means on formula bar it should not display 1/1/11 or 1-Jan-11

As I am going to compare it with another cell(where this cell text is genrated using "=TEXT(I4,"mmm")").
And most imp I dnt want to put another cell to convert it in text like did it above.

Is it possible?
I dnt know weather i explained my requirement properly or not...!

Thanks in advance

Hello Ashurk77
When you type the dates, try preceding them with an apostrophy (i.e. 'Jan-11). This forces Excel to store your data as text, instead of converting it to a date format. If my example is typed into A1, then the formula =TEXT(A1, "mmm") will return Jan.

HTH
Hercules

How are you comparing the entries. A formula to compare them could be

=IF(TEXT((A1),"mmm")=D1,1,0)

Real date in A1, text date in D1