As we mentioned to you just a few days ago, Excel tries to give us all kinds of facilities when it comes to getting the most out of the application as such. To do this, it presents us with all kinds of functions and characteristics that will make life much easier for us in daily work with the PC. Well, one of these elements are the Excel templates, so we already explained how to use them.
However, in this case we want to focus on a somewhat more specific task, on creating a calendar for a specific year from the program Microsoft. Therefore, the first thing we do is start the spreadsheet program on the computer. But before opening a blank or existing document, in this case we open one of the templates which we refer to for calendars. For this we can use the search engine that we see on this home screen, or select one of the most popular categories.
At that time, on the screen we will see a series of templates that Microsoft itself already offers us and that we can use for free. It must be said that these elements can save us a good amount of time and effort, since they present us with a predefined design so that we can customize it.
In this way, we will only have to move between the already predesigned proposals that the program without having to pay for them. We must be careful in the choice, since it will serve as the basis for the project in which we have embarked on the calendar.
The selection we make will expand on the screen, giving us information on it with a small description, a miniature sample, as well as the size it occupies. Of course, one of the main objectives of this, like the rest of the templates, is that we can customize and adapt it to our tastes and needs. Therefore, to start with this task, we will have to click on the button that appears in the window, Create.
Customize the template
In the case that concerns us calendarsAs expected, Excel offers us a good number of alternatives of this type in the form of templates. Well, here we have opted for one that separates the days of the year by Moon phases, so it has an attractive design. But of course, as we tell you, once loaded, the template will appear on the screen so that we can customize it.
It is evident that one of the first, and most important tasks that we must carry out at this point, is to change or personalize the year that the template. For example, in the case at hand, we can find this in the upper left part of the template, so we click on it.
This will place us in the cell corresponding to that specific data, so that, in the upper bar of the application, we can already specify the year which is going to start To say that this is a process that will be very similar in all the templates of this type that we are going to find, not only here. Likewise, this is repeated with the rest of the elements that are part of the template, such as the names of the months or days.
But that’s not all, since we don’t have to abide by the design proposed by the selected template for this custom calendar. We tell you this because from the Insert menu in Excel, we also have the opportunity to add new elements to the predefined design beforehand. In this way we will have the possibility of incorporating new images into the document that decorate it, or graphicsamong other things.
At the same time, we can also carry out other tasks such as changing the fonts, colors or alignment of the texts. For this it will be enough that we select them and use the functions that Excel makes available to us. However, we recommend that, to make deeper aesthetic changes, you be careful, since this is a very careful section in these predefined templates.
Use third-party templates
In these lines we have shown you how to choose, load and use a template focused on this theme in the Microsoft spreadsheet program. At the same time, it should be noted that what is shown here refers to the templates that the same company based in redmond offers to its users. But in this same sense we have many other alternatives to create these personalized calendars. We tell you all this because on the Internet you can find, just by searching a little on Googlemultitude of third-party templates.
These are developments external to the program itself but they will also be very useful in these tasks that we propose. Thus, from websites like the one you find at or at , you can directly load the calendar items displayed here. In fact, in most cases, when trying to download these templates, we will see that we have the possibility of loading them directly into Excel itself. This will allow us to start working with them in a much more direct way. Before downloading any calendar template over the Internet, we must bear in mind that if it contains macros, we must quickly remove them from our computer and never activate them, since, with a method widely used by friends of others to infect computers , since they allow executing code that is not analyzed by our computer’s antivirus as it is not an application itself.
Download Office templates
To avoid any security risk, the best we can do is rely solely on the large number of templates available through Office, templates that we can access directly from the application itself. In this way, by downloading the content directly from the Office servers, we can be 100% sure that the content, even if it includes macros, does not include any type of code that could put the data we store on the computer at risk.
These templates are available through the File ribbon, within the New section. In this section, in the search box where templates are displayed randomly, we must write the word calendar to display all the available options. To use any of these, we just have to double-click on it so that they are downloaded to our computer and start using them without having to pay any additional euro to the price that we are already paying for our Microsoft 365 subscription.
We can modify anything we don’t like about the templates to adapt them to our needs, but if we don’t want to waste a lot of time creating our own calendar, the best thing we can do is check if any of the available ones replaces the needs that we have in order to reduce the number of modifications to be made.
Create a calendar from scratch
But that’s the easy way to go when it comes to creating a new calendar from Excel. We tell you this because there is also the possibility that more advanced or curious users want to make their own designs right from the start. It is evident that this task will have to be carried out from a blank document to start with the work itself. In this way, the first thing we will do is open the spreadsheet program as such, and on the screen that appears, in this case we opt for Blank Book.
Next, what will appear on the screen is the usual Interface Excel user ID, that is, a document full of cells so that we can add the data. We recommend that before starting with the design as such, you click on the button in the upper left corner to select all the cells. Then click with the right mouse button to select Format cells, and in the Number tab, opt for Text. In this way we prevent Excel from converting the data we enter on its own and keeping it as it is.
After this, the first thing we will do, for example, is to leave a hole at the top to establish the name of the month in big. To do this, we select the first four rows and the 14 columns that will be the width of the calendar as such.
After this, in the Start menu option, click on the Combine and center button that we find in the center of the bar. Then we can already introduce the name of the first month with which we are going to work, in this case, January. Of course, in principle we will see this with the default size and font, so we have to customize it. We achieve this from the usual buttons on the start menuwhere we select both the font and the size of the marked text.
Once we have the headline, we recommend that you resize the previously marked columns, that is, the first 14, to give the calendar a slightly more attractive appearance. For example, we can leave a small gap between each of the days of the week, as we can see in the attached image, where we introduce the day number of the month.
Once we have typed both the name of the days and their corresponding numbers, depending on the month, we will delimit each one so that we can take notes, for example. For these specific tasks we recommend the use of the borders that Excel offers us. This functionality is initially located under the font types, in the Start menu. Therefore, we will only have to mark the rows and columns they will make up each day of the month, and mark it with their edges.
customize the design
The type of border, space and others, will depend on the tastes and preferences of each one, as it happens with everything related to the design of our calendar in excel. The important thing here is that it be as comfortable as possible for us, since we will be using it for the next 12 months.
At first, this would be the most basic design, as well as functional, that we could do on a day of the month, but we can go one step further. Thus, we will have the opportunity to color each week with a tonality, the alternative weeks, each day, highlight the holidays, etc. As we have mentioned before, everything will depend on how much we want to complicate ourselves, or how attractive we want the new calendar to be.
It must be said that for this that we propose, we can use the relevant functions for coloring cells, something that we also find in the Start menu. Thus, we will only have to mark the cells or groups of cells that we want to change, and select the hue that we like the most.
As we told you before, this is something that will depend on the tastes and preferences of each one, since the possibilities in this regard are almost endless. And it is that Excel offers us an enormous amount of possibilities of personalization for the design of our spreadsheets. All this refers to the sourcescolors, cell size, text color, etc.
But of course, this is something that corresponds to a single month, so the next we will have to modify our creation and adapt it to the days of that month. Of course, we can use the same base in what refers to the design as such, changing only the numerical data and the texts. This is one of the drawbacks…
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