# Today date without user login **URL:** \ **Category:** Ask for Help\ **Created:** [May 11, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/today-date-without-user-login/26650 "2021-05-11T19:53:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 3
**Author:** ![Darren\_Murphy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/darren_murphy/32/47326_2.png) [@Darren\_Murphy](https://community.glideapps.com/u/Darren_Murphy)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2021, 3:14am UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/today-date-without-user-login/26650/3 "2021-05-12T03:14:58Z")
> [@Jeff\_Hager](#): > > That would give you the month number that you can convert to the word version with an IF column @Jeff_Hager I just had an epiphany! In my apps, I have lots of columns that look like this: ![Screen Shot 2021-05-12 at 11.04.16 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/glideapps/original/3X/5/9/596eacab29124d0e285deaf57b30813db7538097.png) As I was creating _yet another_ one of these yesterday I was thinking to myself “there must be an easier way”. And then it hit me just now as I was reading your post… Challenge: Extract the short month name from a date (eg. “Jan”) The way I normally do this is by first extracting the Month and Day components using date math, and then that stupid if-then-else column to determine the month name. But there is a _much_ easier way… - Create a Text column that contains all the month names - Then do a direct lookup on this column with a Single Value, using the calculated month number as an offset from the start. ![Screen Shot 2021-05-12 at 11.11.20 AM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/glideapps/original/3X/0/4/04e68802801510937b7e74c25c1721848ee17cec.png) Soooooo much easier!! 😆 --- _[View the full topic](https://community.glideapps.com/t/today-date-without-user-login/26650)._