Microsoft Excel is built around one calendar: Gregorian, also called AD. It stores every date as a serial number counted from a fixed starting point, and every year/month/day calculation it does is based on that Gregorian structure. Nepal's official calendar, Bikram Sambat (BS), is a completely different system with its own month lengths and its own New Year. So when you have a column of English dates in Excel and need the matching Nepali date next to it, reformatting the cell will not get you there. You need an actual AD-to-BS conversion, and this guide walks through every practical way to do that, including the fastest one: pairing Excel with Merokalam's free Nepali Date Converter to convert an English date to Nepali date in a few seconds.
No, Excel cannot convert AD to BS on its own. Changing a cell's number format only changes how a Gregorian date is displayed, for example 19/08/2026 versus 2026-08-19. It does not turn it into a Bikram Sambat date. To get a real BS date you need a dedicated conversion tool, a properly built custom function, VBA, or a third-party add-in. For occasional use, pasting the date into Merokalam's Nepali Date Converter is the simplest option, since it needs no installation and works in any browser.
What Does AD to BS Mean in Excel?
AD (Anno Domini), also called the Gregorian calendar, is the international calendar Excel is built around. BS (Bikram Sambat) is Nepal's official calendar, currently running about 56 to 57 years ahead of AD, with its own month lengths and its own New Year around mid-April. Any spreadsheet that mixes international dates with Nepali records, a joining date typed in English next to a citizenship number that references a BS date, for example, needs both systems represented accurately.
| English Date (AD) | Nepali Date (BS) |
|---|---|
| 19 August 2026 | Bhadra 3, 2083 (भदौ ३, २०८३) |
| 14 April 2026 | Baisakh 1, 2083, Nepali New Year |
| 13 April 2026 | Chaitra 30, 2082, the last day of the previous BS year |
Every BS date in this article was generated from Merokalam's own date-conversion data, the same dataset behind the Nepali Date Converter, not estimated or rounded.
Can Microsoft Excel Convert English Dates to Nepali Dates Automatically?
No, not by itself. This is the single most common point of confusion, so it is worth separating clearly into two different things people mean when they say "change the date format."
Date formatting (what changing a cell's format does)
Right-click a cell, choose Format Cells, and Excel will happily display 19/08/2026 as 2026-08-19 or 19-Aug-2026. Underneath, Excel is still storing the same Gregorian serial date value. Nothing about the actual calendar changed, only how the number is displayed on screen.
Calendar conversion (what you actually need)
Converting AD to BS means recalculating which Bikram Sambat year, month, and day corresponds to a given Gregorian date, using Nepal's actual BS month-length data. Excel has no built-in awareness of the BS calendar, so this step has to come from an external tool, function, or add-in.
Excel internally represents every date as a serial number, day 1 being 1 January 1900 on Windows, with all of its YEAR(), MONTH(), DAY(), and DATE() functions built around that Gregorian serial system. Microsoft's own documentation on how Excel stores and calculates dates confirms this is purely a Gregorian date system with no concept of alternate regional calendars like Bikram Sambat built in. That is exactly why reformatting a cell can never produce a BS date on its own.
Method 1: Convert an Excel Date Using Merokalam's Nepali Date Converter
This is the simplest method for anyone who needs an accurate BS date next to an AD date without installing anything or writing a formula.
HR joining date, converted for real
Employee: Ram Sharma · Joining Date (AD): 2026-08-19 · Joining Date (BS): Bhadra 3, 2083
| Employee | Joining Date AD | Joining Date BS |
|---|---|---|
| Ram Sharma | 2026-08-19 | 2083-05-03 (Bhadra 3, 2083) |
The Process, Visually
How to Organize AD and BS Dates in a Spreadsheet
The most reliable layout keeps both dates side by side rather than replacing the original value. A simple three-column structure works for almost every use case:
Keeping the original AD date rather than overwriting it matters more than it seems. If a conversion ever needs to be double-checked, re-sorted chronologically, or re-exported to a system that expects Gregorian dates, the source value is still right there. This layout shows up constantly in real Nepal spreadsheets: employee joining and birth dates in HR files, invoice and voucher dates in accounting sheets, enrollment and exam dates in school records, and issue dates on citizenship, passport, or bank documents that reference BS on the official paperwork but AD in an internal database.
Free AD to BS Excel template
A blank, ready-to-use spreadsheet with the Name / AD Date / BS Date / Description columns already set up, plus a short notes tab explaining how to use it. No macros, no formulas that could break, just a clean starting layout.
Is There a Built-In AD to BS Formula in Excel?
No. Microsoft Excel has no native, built-in formula that converts AD to BS. There is no official =AD2BS() function shipped with Excel, the same way there is no built-in function for the Hijri, Ethiopian, or other regional calendars beyond the handful Microsoft explicitly documents for its regional calendar settings, which does not include Bikram Sambat.
If you have seen a formula like =AD2BS(A2) in a forum post, YouTube comment, or downloaded spreadsheet, it did not come from Excel itself. It came from one of these three sources:
Copy that formula into a fresh workbook without the underlying macro, add-in, or name definition, and it will show a #NAME? error, because Excel genuinely does not recognize it.
Using an Excel Add-In for AD to BS Conversion
An Excel add-in is a small piece of installed software that extends what Excel can do, in this case by registering new functions such as AD2BS() and BS2AD() that then behave like any normal formula once installed. Several Nepali developers have built add-ins like this over the years, usually distributed as a downloadable installer or an .xlam add-in file.
The functions such an add-in exposes are provided by that specific add-in, not by Microsoft Excel. If you uninstall the add-in, share the workbook with someone who does not have it installed, or open the file on a different computer, those formulas stop working. That is a meaningful limitation worth weighing against the convenience.
A short security note: only install an Excel add-in from a source you trust, and understand roughly what it does before enabling macros. Add-ins and macro-enabled files can run code on your computer, so downloading an unfamiliar .exe installer or enabling macros in an unknown workbook just to get a date-conversion formula is rarely worth the risk. If you only need occasional conversions, a browser-based tool like Merokalam's Nepali Date Converter avoids installing anything at all.
Can You Create Your Own AD to BS Function in Excel?
Conceptually, yes. VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) can implement a custom function that looks up which BS month and day a given Gregorian date falls into, then returns that as text or a formatted value, and once written, it would behave inside Excel like any other formula, for example =MyAD2BS(A2).
The catch is accuracy, not syntax. A correct AD-to-BS function needs the real Bikram Sambat month-length data for every year it needs to support, because BS month lengths are not fixed the way Gregorian months are, they run anywhere from 29 to 32 days and change from year to year. Writing that function is genuinely more involved than a short formula, and getting it wrong at a month boundary or around the mid-April Nepali New Year will produce a wrong date that looks plausible, which is the worst kind of error in an official record.
Because of that, this guide is not going to publish untested VBA code here. A rough approximation is worse than no formula at all when the result feeds into an HR record, a citizenship form, or a bank document. If you need automation at scale, either build the function against a verified BS month-length table covering your full date range and test it thoroughly across New Year transitions and multiple years, or use a maintained add-in or tool that has already done that work.
Why You Cannot Simply Add 56 or 57 Years
This shortcut shows up constantly, and it fails for a simple reason: AD and BS years do not start on the same day. The Gregorian year starts 1 January. The Bikram Sambat year starts around mid-April. That means for roughly the first three and a half months of any Gregorian year, the correct offset is +56 years, and for the rest of the year it is +57.
| AD Date | Correct BS Date | What "+57" Alone Would Wrongly Suggest |
|---|---|---|
| 15 January 2025 | Magh 2, 2081 (AD year + 56) | 2082, which is wrong by a full year |
| 15 May 2025 | Jestha 1, 2082 (AD year + 57) | 2082, which happens to be correct here, but only by coincidence of timing |
Both dates fall in the same Gregorian year, 2025, yet one lands in BS 2081 and the other in BS 2082. A fixed "+57" rule gets the second one right by accident and the first one wrong by an entire year. Even once the year is correct, the month and day still will not line up, because BS months do not start on the 1st, 15th, or any other fixed Gregorian date, and their lengths (29 to 32 days) do not match Gregorian month lengths either. For a deeper explanation of exactly why the two calendars drift apart the way they do, see Merokalam's guide on why Nepal is 57 years ahead on the Bikram Sambat calendar.
Converting Multiple Excel Dates (Bulk AD to BS)
Merokalam's Nepali Date Converter currently converts one date at a time rather than accepting a bulk upload or a full Excel column in one pass. For a handful of dates, the workflow from Method 1 above, look up the date, convert it, paste the result back, works fine done a few times in a row. For a longer list, HR files with fifty employee joining dates for instance, the realistic approach today is:
This is admittedly manual, and it is stated plainly here rather than overstating what the tool does today. If Merokalam adds a bulk or column-upload conversion feature in the future, this section will be updated to reflect it.
Excel Date Format Problems You May Encounter
04/05/2026 means 4 May in most of the world but 5 April under US regional settings. Before converting, confirm which format your file is actually using by checking Excel's regional date settings or by testing a date where day and month cannot be confused, like the 25th of a month.
Dates imported from CSV files, other software, or copy-pasted from a webpage are often stored as plain text rather than an actual Excel date value. Text-formatted dates are left-aligned by default and will not respond to date formatting or date arithmetic, so check alignment or use Excel's "Convert Text to Columns" tool if a column of dates looks off.
Because it cannot be misread as either DD/MM or MM/DD, using 2026-08-19 style formatting when moving dates between systems, spreadsheets, or people in different countries removes an entire category of misreading errors.
A cell's displayed format and its underlying value are not the same thing. Copying a formatted date and pasting it into a cell with different formatting can change how it displays even though the underlying serial value is unchanged. Use Paste Special > Values when you want to be certain.
2083-01-05 and 2083-1-5 represent the same date, but inconsistent formatting across a column can cause sorting or lookup problems. Pick one format for the whole sheet and stick to it.
Merokalam's converter displays results with English digits by default alongside a Devanagari label. If you specifically need Nepali numerals such as २०८३ inside a cell, that is a separate typing step, not something this converter is built or tested to output directly, so verify the exact format you need before relying on it for an official document.
Practical Excel Use Cases in Nepal
AD vs BS Excel Example
| Name | AD Date | BS Date | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sita Gurung | 2026-08-19 | 2083-05-03 (Bhadra 3, 2083) | Joining Date |
| Ram Sharma | 2025-01-15 | 2081-10-02 (Magh 2, 2081) | Date of Birth |
| Anita Thapa | 2025-05-15 | 2082-02-01 (Jestha 1, 2082) | Document Issue Date |
All three BS values above were checked against Merokalam's date-conversion data before publication.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources
Microsoft Support: Date systems in Excel
Official documentation on how Excel stores dates as Gregorian serial values.
Merokalam Nepali Date Converter
Source of every verified BS date example used in this article.
Published: August 2026. Last reviewed: August 2026. Every AD to BS example in this guide was checked against Merokalam's own date-conversion data before publication.
Excel is genuinely good at storing and organizing dates, it just was not built with Nepal's calendar in mind. Keep your original AD date, convert it accurately rather than guessing at an offset, and your spreadsheet will hold up whether it is opened next week or referenced five years from now.