Perhaps you create spreadsheets to collect data, track campaigns, or organize weekly assignments. But have you ever thought about using spreadsheets to make a calendar?
If you often work on campaigns for different clients, creating individual calendars in Google Sheets can help both your teams stay on track. Alternatively, you can create a Google Sheet calendar to coordinate internal projects.
Below, we’ll go over how to make a calendar in Google Sheets, including tips that’ll help you elevate the design. So, open up Google Sheets and get ready to create your very own calendar.
How to Make a Calendar in Google Sheets
- Open a new spreadsheet and choose your month.
- Begin to format your calendar.
- Use a formula to fill in the days of the week.
- Fill in the numbers.
- Fill in the rest of the dates.
- Reformat your calendar if necessary.
- Add design elements.
- Repeat the process from February to December.
1. Open a new spreadsheet and choose your month.
First, open a new spreadsheet.
Then, choose your month. For this example, let’s start with January 2022, so I filled that into the first cell.
What’s great about Google Sheets is that it automatically recognizes dates. Typing in a month, followed by the year in YYYY format will tell Google that you’re going to be working with dates.
2. Begin to format your calendar.
Next, format your calendar. Select your text, (in this case, January 2022) in Column A, Row 1.
Then, highlight seven columns (A-G), and click Merge to make that cell span across the entire column. You can find this button to the right of the Fill tool.
Center-align your text using the tool next to Merge. Then, increased the font size and bold the month if desired.
3. Use a formula to fill in the days of the week.
Next, fill in the days of the week in each column (A-G). You can do this manually or use a formula.
If you’re looking to use a formula, type =TEXT(1, “DDDD”) in the cell where you want your first weekday to be. This tells Google that you will be adding days of the week.
Highlight the number 1 in the formula and replace it with: COLUMN(). Then, press enter and select your first day. You’re going to copy the formula in Sunday’s cell by dragging the selector to the end of your row, (A-G), and pressing enter again.
Pressing enter should automatically fill in the rest of the week. Remember, if this doesn’t work for you, you can always fill in the days manually.
4. Fill in the numbers.
Excellent! You have your days of the week. Now we’re going to fill in the numerical values. Before this step, I took the time to add color to the days row and changed the font to one I liked a little more.
For the numerical values, we’ll simply identify the first day of the month and click and drag to fill in the rest.
How?
Place the number 1 on the box right underneath the first day of the month, then click and drag horizontally. Depending on the day of the week, you may need to follow this process using the second day of the month so you can click and drag horizontally.
For this example, we’ll use Sunday as the first day of the month, but remember that the first day will vary from year to year.
5. Fill in the rest of the numbers.
Now that you’ve filled out your first row, it’s time to fill in the rest. Manually insert the next number under “Sunday,” then click and drag horizontally to fill in the rest.
Repeat the process for the next rows. You’ll insert the first number manually, then click and drag down the row. Here’s what that looks like for the next row in January.
We’ll skip rows to make our design easy to read.
Note: Make sure to end the month on the right number! For January, that would be the 31st.
6. Reformat your calendar if necessary.
At this stage, you can reformat elements to clean up the look of your calendar.
Remember those extra rows in between the numbered rows? You can expand those rows to create boxes underneath the numbers. To do this, simply dragged the rows down to make those cells bigger.
Here are some additional formatting tips:
- Select the empty rows underneath your numbers and center them using the center text alignment tool.
- Select your entire calendar and vertically align all elements so that they’re in the center of their cells. To do this, use the vertical alignment tool.
- Bold your day numbers.
- If desired, lightly shade your numbered rows.
- If desired, gray out the Saturday and Sunday columns so that your workdays stand out.
7. Add design elements.
Finally, you can add in some fun design elements to personalize the look and feel of your calendar. If it’s for a client or project, you’ll want to incorporate the necessary launch days here.
8. Repeat the process from February to December.
It’s time to repeat for the month of February to December. Simply duplicate your January calendar once you’ve designed it how you want it to look. To do this, right-click the sheet’s tab and select Duplicate from the menu.
To fill in the numbers, you’ll only need to know the beginning day, then click and drag to fill in the rest of the rows. Here are the first days for every month for the year 2023:
- January: Sunday
- February: Wednesday
- March: Wednesday
- April: Saturday
- May: Monday
- June: Thursday
- July: Saturday
- August: Tuesday
- September: Friday
- October: Sunday
- November: Wednesday
- December: Friday
Next, you’ll want to know how many days you’ll need to fill in. Here are the number of days you’ll need for each month:
- January: 31
- February: 28 or 29
- March: 31
- April: 30
- May: 31
- June: 30
- July: 31
- August: 31
- September: 30
- October: 31
- November: 30
- December: 31
And then, you’re done!
You may find that a standard calendar won’t meet your needs. Not to worry, you can easily create important business documents, including social and editorial calendars. Check out our templates below.
Google Sheets Calendar Template
Here’s an editorial calendar template for all of your editorial planning needs. We’ve created three different formats for your blog editorial calendar — for Excel, Google Sheets, and Google Calendar.
Our editorial calendar helps you lay out a strong strategy on a daily basis. With a little bit of customization, your editorial calendar will be running smoothly, leaving you more time to focus on the quality of your content.
Featured Resource: Free Editorial Calendar Templates
Use a Google Sheets Calendar to Organize Your Tasks
Clearly organized information better enables you to produce content that is consistent with your marketing strategy. Start by making a Google Sheets program to help you stay on track.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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- Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/make-calendar-google-sheets