Planning your year or month helps boost productivity. The best place to get a free and easy-to-update calendar is from Excel. With Excel, you can create a monthly, weekly, quarterly, or yearly calendar. Besides, you can also decorate the calendar with different colors and fonts. Lastly, you can print it to hang on your wall or place it on your office desk.
In this article, I will show you different ways in which you can create a calendar.
By using a template
Creating a calendar in Excel is a very easy task since there are hundreds of premade templates in the library. All you need is to select one that suits your style and then customize it. Here are the steps.
1. Open the Excel application (Once you do that you will notice that the first page contains different templates)
2. Type “calendars” on the search box or click on a suggestion labeled calendars and click on the search icon
3. Select a calendar of your choice from the list of calendars.
4. To get a calendar for a specific year make sure to include that year on the search term. Eg “ 2024 Calendars” Alternatively pick a template that is labeled “any year calendar”
5. After clicking on your preferred template, click on the Create button
6. The calendar will now launch.
7. You can edit the calendars, colors, or fonts using the Excel ribbon
Download this template
How to create a calendar from scratch
1. Create a new Excel sheet then type days of the the week starting with Sunday (Skip the first two rows to label the calendar)
2. Resize the cells uniformly. First, select the 7 columns then place the cursor on the border of the last column until it makes a shape for expanding. Now drag it to the right a few inches.
3. Adjust the height of the rows too. Highlight the rows that will hold the dates then drag them downwards
4. Customize the cells so that the dates appear on the top right corner of every cell. To achieve this, highlight the range of cells that will hold dates, right-click, and select format cells. Click on the alignment tab. Finally, navigate to the text alignment area and set horizontal to right and vertical to top.
5. Press OK to apply the changes
6. Copy this sheet to have 12 copies that will hold each separate month. You just need to right-click on the sheet name and select move or copy
7. Using your computer or mobile phone calendar as a guide, fill in the dates
8. Repeat the same for the remaining months
9. Finally you can print your calendar. For example, to print the month of January, highlight the whole calendar including the titles. Then click on File>Print. Use settings to customize the appearance of your calendar
Download this template
Similar Read: How to count days since date
How to create a Weekly Calendar in Excel
A weekly calendar helps people stay organized whether it’s at the workplace, school, or home. It’s ideal as it helps in managing tasks, activities, and events in a neat manner. Here is how you can create a weekly calendar in Excel
1. Open a blank Excel sheet
2. Type the days of the week starting from cell A2.
3. Next type the time that you wish to manage starting from cell B2
3. Now customize the cell sizes to accommodate your activities. First, select all the rows containing days of the week. Then, place a cursor at the bottom of the last border until it forms a different symbol. Now drag it downwards a few inches to enlarge its height.
4. Repeat the same process for the columns
Download this weekly calendar template
Free Calendar Templates
Download the following calendar templates for any year.
2024 Calendar With Holidays
Any Year Excel Calendar
The following calendar updates automatically to the current year. However, you can type any year that wish to see and it will update accordingly.
Monthly Planner Calendar.
The following calendar will allow you to plan for your entire year on the same sheet.
