Converting Between Buddhist and Gregorian Calendar Systems

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 20, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


1

There are a number of date systems used around the world. The most-widely used is called the Gregorian calendar, with the BC and AD date system familiar to many people. There is another calendar system used by many people around the world called the Buddhist calendar. This calendar system begins its reckoning based on the birth of Buddha. Since this religious leader was born in 543 BC (or Jesus was born 543 years after Buddha, depending on how you look at it), you can convert from one system to another simply by making the proper adjustment to the year.

In other words, the year 2002 in the Gregorian system is expressed as 2545 in the Buddhist system. Likewise, the year 2500 in the Buddhist system would be 1957 in the Gregorian system. Thus, suppose you have the Buddhist date 430611, where 43 is the year (2543), 06 is the month, and 11 is the day of the month. You can convert this to a Gregorian equivalent by simply adding 1957 to the year, in this manner, assuming the Buddhist date is in cell A8:

=DATE(MID(A8,1,2)+1957,MID(A8,3,2),MID(A8,5,2))

The formula essentially pulls the characters of the Buddhist date apart, adds 1957 to the year, and uses the DATE function to put the pieces back together into the Gregorian system.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2049) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Replacing an X with a Check Mark

In order to provide a finishing touch to your document, you may want to replace mundane X marks with fancier check marks. ...

Discover More

Parsing Non-Standard Date Formats

When you load data into Excel that was created in other programs, the formatting used for some types of data (such as ...

Discover More

Updating Document Links

If you establish dynamic links between documents, then you can force Word to update those links whenever you want. How ...

Discover More

Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 365 applications with VBA programming. Written in clear terms and understandable language, the book includes systematic tutorials and contains both intermediate and advanced content for experienced VB developers. Designed to be comprehensive, the book addresses not just one Office application, but the entire Office suite. Check out Mastering VBA for Microsoft Office 365 today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Determining Month Names for a Range of Dates

Given a starting date and an ending date, you may want to generate the names of all the months between those two dates. ...

Discover More

ISO Week Numbers in Excel

Work in an industry that uses ISO standards when it comes to working with dates? You'll love the formula in this tip ...

Discover More

Inserting Tomorrow's Date

You can use a couple of different worksheet functions to enter today's date in a cell. What if you want to calculate ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is two minus 1?

2025-03-14 18:05:06

Barbie

Wouldn't the number to add be 543? 1957 was just one of the years given as an example.


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.