Hi,
A bit more information is needed. You say that you "have a date" -- is your date column -already- in a SAS dataset? Could it be in a CSV file, or some other file (like a database file) and you want to READ it into SAS date format? Like this example of CSV:
[pre]
"Name","Bday","Idea"
"Alan",122905,"Books"
"Barb",111550,"CDs"
[/pre]
If your date value is in a SAS dataset, is it a numeric variable or a character variable? (You can figure this out by running PROC CONTENTS). Does it have a SAS date format assigned already (also PROC CONTENTS).
If your date variable is actually a character string, then you have to convert it from character to numeric form in order to use the MONYY format.
What do you see when you do a PROC PRINT of the data? Can you read the numbers or do they look strange? (For example 122905 stored as a SAS date value will show up unformatted in the data as: 16799 because December 29, 2005 was 16799 days after January 1, 1960).
In order to help you, we need some idea of what you're dealing with -- raw data or data that's already in a SAS dataset or data that's coming from a relational database. Whether your date value is "raw" or is already stored as a SAS date value or is a character string that represents the date. How (what procedure) you are using to apply the MONYY format.
cynthia