With all the daily tasks to be faced at work and at home, with appointments, meetings, reminders of deadlines and projects to be completed, it becomes difficult to keep pace and remember everything without forgetting something. In these cases, the good old calendar helps us, in which we can mark all our present and future commitments, so as not to forget anything. If the paper calendar is too inconvenient and impractical for you, in this guide we will show you how to create a personalized calendar in Excel, so you can mark all your appointments electronically and take the calendar wherever we are, avoiding forgetting an appointment or deadline . At the end of the guide we will also show you how to download ready-made calendars (for those in a hurry).
READ ALSO: Download the compact and pocket calendar in Excel or PDF
How to create a simple calendar in Excel
The simplest method to create a calendar on Excel involves the use of ready-made templates, we just have to upload them to our file and start using them.We open Excel on our PC and, on the home page, we scroll the page until we find the three calendar templates included in the program.
We choose the style of the calendar that best suits our needs, then click on it to load it into the spreadsheet (for the test we have opened the academic calendar).
The calendar will be automatically generated, providing a box for all the days included in the current month. To change the year and the starting month of the calendar, we click on cell B1 to insert any year, then we click on cell C1 to insert the starting month of the calendar; in a completely automatic way Excel will generate the precise days for the month and will show, scrolling in the spreadsheet, the following months ready for use.
To add an appointment, simply double-click in any cell within the calendar and start filling in the calendar, entering the information to remember. If we have to enter more than one appointment, we press ALT + ENTER on the keyboard to go ahead and enter more than one entry; if the entries become too many and are no longer visible, we can also enlarge the Excel row by double clicking on the lower bar of the row in which we have written, so that it is always visible.
The other calendars included in Excel behave slightly differently (for example there is a worksheet for each month and we will have to indicate separately the month and year of departure and in addition indicate with a few days the week starts) but the operation is very similar to as shown above.
How to create a manual calendar in Excel
If the models made available by Excel do not convince us, we can also create our own calendar on Excel, even if it certainly requires more time and dedication.We open Excel, select Empty workbook, so as to open an empty spreadsheet, on which we will create our personal calendar. Click on cell A1, type 1/1 inside it and press Enter ; if we want to start the calendar from another month, we enter the number of the corresponding month (for example 1/2 for February, 1/3 for March etc.). To create calendars for a specific year instead, we will have to type 1/1/2020 (so as to generate the month of January 2020).We will immediately see format change to the cell, showing the chosen month; to make the calendar even more precise, we right-click on the cell in which we have entered this value, go to Format cells, make sure we are in the Number tab then select the Custom category and insert, in the Type field, the value mmmm yyyy .
We click OK to make the changes effective. After creating the beginning of our calendar, we select the cell, choose a fill color and slightly enlarge the font, so that it is clearly visible (we will find everything you need in the upper Home bar). After creating the month it's time to create all the days, which will be lined up under column A.
We click on the A3 box, and type = A1, so as to copy the format entered in the first cell. Now we right click on it, repeat the steps already seen previously ( Format cells, make sure we are in the Number tab then select the Custom category) and, in the Type field, type this time gggg dd mmm .
Once pressed on OK we will see the first day of the month appear in a readable format; to add the following we click on cell A4, insert inside = A3 + 1, wait for the day to be generated then click on the lower right corner of the cell just modified (there should be a small square) and, holding down the button, we go down to automatically create all the days of the week.
We can color the days to make them more visible and change the size of the respective lines, so that you can enter all the appointments more comfortably (which will be lined up by line).
TIP : if the month does not end by 31 or we are creating the month of February (which can have 28 or 29 days), the days of the following month will appear at the end of the month (already present in the respective sheet, therefore useless). To remove these redundant data, we delete the contents of cells A31, A32 and A33 and insert, in each of them, the following formulas:
- A31 we type = SE (MONTH (A30 + 1) = MONTH (A1); A30 + 1; "")
- A32 we type = SE (MONTH (A30 + 2) = MONTH (A1); A30 + 2; "")
- A33 we type = SE (MONTH (A30 + 3) = MONTH (A1); A30 + 3; "")
In this way, when we are going to create the month, the days not included in it will be ignored, so as to have a single sheet with all the actual days of the month in question. We recommend creating a new sheet for each month by clicking on the + symbol ( New sheet ) at the bottom. We don't even have to repeat all the steps to add it correctly: copy the contents of column A (right click on column A and press Copy ), go to the new sheet and use the Paste button on the new column A.
To generate the month we only need to modify the first cell (i.e. A1 ), entering the value of the month you wish to insert (for example (01/02/2019, 01/03/2019 etc.).
For those who use LibreOffice Calc : we have tried the steps and formulas also on LibreOffice and we can confirm that they work in the same way. So if we use Calc for spreadsheets, just follow the steps to the letter (very few details change) to create your personalized calendar.
How to download ready-made calendars
In this guide we have shown you how to create a convenient calendar for appointments using the templates offered by Office and also showing you the steps necessary to be able to create your calendar yourself, so as to have more control over everything related to your life.If you wish to download other calendar templates for Excel and other office programs, please refer to our guide to Word, Excel or PDF calendar templates. If, on the other hand, we want a calendar ready for use, quick and easy to consult, we invite you to download the Navigaweb calendar, available in our article Calendar to download, print and create in PDF or Excel, compact and pocket-sized (we update it every year, so get ready to download a copy after New Years!).
For those who want a calendar visible on the PC desktop or use a program that also acts as a personal agenda, we recommend you read our guides to the Calendar on the PC desktop screen and the Best Calendar and agenda programs for PC free and in Italian .
