How to Make a Calendar Template in Excel

In the course of your normal life, you might have reason to make your own calendars. You can do this for a variety of reasons, whether for business or personal reasons. Whatever your reasons, you can rely on tools like Microsoft calendar templates to help you with some of the more detailed work of making a calendar of your own.

Of course, if you wanted, you could also make your own custom Excel calendar templates rather than find pre-made templates online. There are some advantages attached to doing so since these would be custom-made calendar templates tailored to your particular needs. If done right, you may even reuse them every year, to say nothing of any other advantages that could further entice you to make your own templates.

How to Make Calendar Templates in Excel

In order to make your own personal calendar templates, there are a number of steps to keep in mind. After all, if you are to make your own personalized documents, much less document templates, you always need to be aware of the appropriate steps to take so as to make them properly. In the case of calendar templates, those steps include:

First, decide the period for your calendar template.

There are a number of different formats for different calendars, daily calendars being one. Before you make your template, you first need to decide what period format would be best for your purposes, such as annual or monthly calendars. This can help you determine how your template can be used, such as determining how much warning the resulting calendar can give you, or how many events you can include in it.

Take the time to decide the purpose of your eventual calendar.

Calendar templates can also be very specialized for your needs, such as event calendar templates for posting and planning upcoming events of any import. In that case, you may want to specialize your own calendars so as to suit particular needs. This can be especially useful if your template will see use in a professional setting.

Assuming you make a monthly template, set the appropriate month.

As you may have seen in different sample calendar templates, some calendars depict each month. If your template will do the same, you should start with the appropriate month for each individual sheet of your template. If you instead elect to use a different period of time, such as years or weeks, then start by including that appropriate periods instead.

Arrange the appropriate days of the month into individual cells.

If you are indeed making a monthly calendar, then you should arrange the days of that month in the cells of that sheet. Make sure to count out the appropriate number of days for that month so as to provide yourself with a cell for each day. This would be necessary for whenever you need to include events for specific days.

Rearrange each cell to have enough space for relevant events.

In order to be assured that each cell has enough space for different events, you should make sure to adjust the sizes of each cell so as to let the event fit in. This is true of every kind of calendar template, such as birthday calendar templates, as this gives you enough space to read each event. This is especially necessary if there happen to be multiple events on the same day. If you are going to print out your templates, then you definitely need to include space for you to write on.

Copy and paste the basic format of each cell.

In order to make the task of making the calendar simpler, you can take certain shortcuts to cut away some of the tedium. One method is to copy and paste each cell so as to reuse the same general cell size for each day. Being that there are literally hundreds of days per year, this can go some way toward saving you a considerable amount of time.

Do the same for each month.

Make sure to apply these methods to each month so that you have resources available to list your events throughout the entire year. After all, you can make the most of your templates if you happen to extend them to cover longer periods.

Make sure to update your basic template each year.

This is a given, as the longest a given calendar can cover is a year. In that case, you would be wise to be ready to update your basic calendar template every year so that the template can be kept up to date. This is especially important as days do not correspond to the same dates every year, especially in the case of leap years.

Advantages of Making Your Own Calendar Templates

If you needed more incentive to make your own calendar templates for your own use, there are some concrete reasons why you might want to do so. After all, having your own templates can prove useful for your needs.

They are reusable.

Since you are making general templates, it is possible for you to reuse your templates, even over years if need be. This is an especially useful trait if your position requires you to make heavy use of certain types of calendar, such as appointment calendars.

You can customize templates for your own needs.

Considering that you are making your own calendar templates specifically suited for your own needs, you should be able to make your templates for the most specific purpose. One example that comes to mind is that of school calendar templates, which can be used to determine a given school’s events for that particular school year.

It is possible to share them with others.

If necessary, you do also have the option of sharing the templates you share with others, just like other templates. While this may apply to personal use if you want to share your templates with friends, there may be professional reasons for sharing calendar templates, such as generating a marketing calendar template for your company’s use.

You can be assured of making them however you want.

Since you are making your own calendar templates, this gives you the freedom to make them however you want. Rather than rely on pre-made templates, you can make your templates according to whatever design or standard you like, so as not to have to settle for templates you find unsuitable.

These insights should prove to be useful aids if you ever have your own need to make different calendar templates, to say nothing of any calendars you may have to make such as sample marketing calendars.

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