While Google Sheets offers pre made calendars that are very useful, it is still a good idea to know how to make one from scratch using simple data table features.
A monthly calendar is just as important as an hourly calendar, and the better you manage your time, the less stress you will have to go through.
Today, I will walk you through the process and techniques that I use to make a calendar from scratch.
Step #1: The Days of the Week
First, you will go down to Cell B4 and start out with typing in the word Sunday (or even Sun). From there, click and drag the bottom right corner to cell H4. That will fill in the other six days of the week.
To learn more about autofilling cells, click the link here
Step #2: Creating the "Dates"
Next you will need to create the cells highlight Cells B5 to B7, and in the top of the screen, select the Merge Cells option.
To learn more about merging cells, click the link here.
Once you do that Drag corner of the cell horizontally from Sunday to Saturday, and then from there, that whole first row down to Row 19. From here, you will have enough cells to fill in the dates of your calendar
Step #3A: Fill in the "Date" Cells
In the case of this calendar, I am making it for September 2021; meaning the first day is on a Wednesday and the last day, the 30th, is on a Thursday.
When building a calendar, it is always important to remember how many days are in each month, as they are varied between a few numbers.
- 30 Days: September, April, June, and November,
- 31 Days: January, March, May, July, August, October, and December
- 28 Days: February (most of the time)
You can either manually input the date numbers into each cell, or you could use the fill in technique like I mentioned in Step 1, as well as an older blog of mine, located here.
Just make sure you input the first two numbers of that Row, highlight them, and drag through the other five cells in that given row.
Step #3B: Orient the Numbers
Next, you will need to place the numbers in the top-left corner. To do this:
- Highlight all of the date cells
- Vertical align Top
- Horizontal align Left
The alignment buttons will be next to each other, and it should be pretty easy to figure out.
Step #4: Title your Calendar
Make sure you specify the year of the month, as that will help later on when you have more calendars.
Step #5: Final Customizations
Lastly, you will want to add some aesthetic tweaks to your calendar and really make it pop. I like to add:
- Borders
- Alternating Colors
- and a Bold Font
That will really take your calendar the extra mile and make it engaging as well as informative.
Bonus Tip #1: Insert Comments to Date Cells
I personally think it's ugly and tedious to manually input my agenda for a given day into a cell.
What I do instead is I insert a comment to the cell corresponding with a an important part of my schedule.
You do this by clicking the desired cell and using the keyboard shortcut
Command+Option+M for Mac
or
CTRL+ALT+M for Windows
You can alternatively just select the Insert Menu and click on Comment. That will do the same thing.
You can also link a doc, or even a Google Sheets Checklist, if the tasks for that day are particularly long and/or extensive.
When you hover your cursor over the date you commented on, that comment will appear, reminding you of that item on your schedule.
Bonus Tip #2: Organize With Tabs
What I like to do when making a bunch of calendars is to organize them as much as I can. The easiest way to do that is through adding a new sheet to the pre-existing Google Sheet Calendar every time you fill in a new month.
You can also rename the tabs from things like Sheet 1 and Sheet 2 into more organized terms like Sep '21 and Oct '21.