This tip explains how to Calculate the 1st Day of the month in Excel.

We know how to get today's date... use: =TODAY()

For me right now, this returns 30-Jan-2009 ... so is there a way to get the 1st Day of the month from this ?

YES - use the DATE function.

DATE is a handy function that allows you to construct a date whilst inputting YEAR, MONTH and DAY. Excel also has the functions YEAR(), MONTH() and DAY() which take a date, and return the YEAR, MONTH and DAY respectively.

So lets see this in action.

=DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),MONTH(TODAY()),1)

- will return the 1st day of the month. - it takes the year and month from TODAY, and uses 1 as the day.

Download a spreadsheet to practice calculating the 1st day of the current month in Excel

Training video on how to Calculate the first day of the month: