How to Find the Quarter of a Date in Excel

Turn any date into its calendar quarter, build labels like "Q2 2026", and find the first day of the quarter.

You will learn to

• Calculate the quarter number from a date
• Build a quarter-and-year label
• Return the first day of a date’s quarter

How it works

Excel has no QUARTER function, but one short formula does the job: =ROUNDUP(MONTH(B2)/3,0). Months 1–3 give 1, months 4–6 give 2, and so on. Join it with text and YEAR to build labels such as "Q2 2026" for reports and PivotTables.

To get the first day of a date’s quarter, turn the quarter back into its first month — (quarter−1)×3+1 — and feed it to DATE: =DATE(YEAR(B2),(ROUNDUP(MONTH(B2)/3,0)-1)*3+1,1).

=ROUNDUP(MONTH(B2)/3,0)