Today, we’ll show you how to create a calendar in Google Sheets step-by-step.
Google Sheets comes with powerful tools to track and organize tasks. Users can create a perfect calendar using these tools. It can be shared with others or printed to use at home or in the office.
A calendar is a crucial tool for planning tasks, events, meetings, and more.
An online calendar created using Google Sheets offers various benefits over Google and Apple calendars. Moreover, spreadsheet programs allow you to customize calendars to your specific needs.
In this article, we will learn to create a calendar in Google Sheets. It is divided into the following sections. You can click on the links to jump to that particular section.
But before we dig deep into the steps, let’s discuss why you should create a calendar using spreadsheet software like Google Sheets.
The Benefits of Creating a Calendar in Google Sheets
There are various online calendars available at your fingertips, including Google and Apple calendars.
If you are wondering why I would need a Google Sheets calendar, then here are a few key features:
- Extensive customization: Google Sheets boasts powerful functions to analyze and organize data. It allows you to add your brand logo before sharing the calendar with your colleagues and clients. In short, the spreadsheet program allows you to customize the calendar to your specific requirements without any limitations.
- Formatting: You can highlight dates and weekdays that satisfy certain criteria with different colors. From changing the font color to creating a unique border for specific dates, the possibilities are endless.
- Real-time collaboration: Google Sheets calendars can be shared with unlimited users. It allows you to assign specific roles to each user. They can either edit, comment, or view the spreadsheet based on their assigned roles. Your colleagues or clients can collaborate in real-time. Each change in your calendar can be viewed using the “Version History” feature in Google Sheets.
- Online editor: Google Sheets is a web-based spreadsheet program that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You can access it on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Seamless tracking: Calendar is the best way to keep track of your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks. Google Sheets functions and features, such as Conditional formatting, take it beyond with advanced data analysis possibilities.
Apart from the above, Google Sheets is an easy-to-use spreadsheet program that can be used to create timesheets, content calendars, weekly trackers, and more.
Now, without any further ado, let’s create a calendar in Google Sheets.
How to Create a Monthly Calendar using Google Sheets
The Monthly Google Sheets calendar contains each month in a separate spreadsheet.
You can either customize built-in templates by Google Sheets to your requirements or create a calendar from scratch.
We’ll discuss both of them in the following sections.
METHOD #1 – Customize Built-in Google Sheets Calendar Template
It is the quickest method of creating a calendar in Google Sheets. It doesn’t require any expert knowledge.
Compared to other methods of creating a monthly calendar in Google Sheets, this method creates a calendar that auto-updates based on the year you choose.
- Go to the Google Sheets dashboard by clicking here
- Click on the “Template library” button at the top. Refer to the following image
- A new window will open. Choose the “Annual Calendar” template as shown below
- The Annual Calendar Google Sheets is divided into several spreadsheets containing a mini yearly calendar, customization instructions, and months of the year.
How to customize the Google Sheets Calendar Template
- Follow the steps below to select the different themes for your calendar.
- Hover to the main menu and click on “Format”
- Select the “Theme” option from the popup
- A new dialog box will appear on the right side of the screen, as shown below
- Select any theme from the available options. We will select the first one for demonstration
- Next, click on the “Customize” button at the top
- You will see the range of options to change the background colors, including text, hyperlinks, and chart background
- Once you are done adjusting the colors, click on the “Done” button at the top
Note that you can also change the font type by clicking on the dropdown below the “Font” option.
How to auto-update monthly Google Sheets Calendar Template
This built-in template by Google Sheets is really powerful. You can simply change the year, and all the spreadsheets will auto-update with respect to the selected year.
Let’s change the year to 2024,
- Select the cell as shown in the following image
- Press the “Delete” button on your keyboard
- Type “=year”
- Select the first option from the popup or press “Tab” on your keyboard
- Next, put the date “1/1/2024” in double quotation marks, as shown below
- Complete the bracket using “)”
- Press “Enter” key
The final formula will be as follows,
=YEAR(“1/1/2024”)
You can replace the date with any year of your choice. Make sure to put the first date of the year and use double quotation marks.
METHOD #2 – Create a Monthly Calendar from scratch in Google Sheets
Let us create a monthly calendar from scratch using Google Sheets. We will use the formatting feature offered by this online spreadsheet program to create a calendar.
You can print this calendar for office use.
It doesn’t require any expert knowledge to create such a basic calendar in Google Sheets. Note the calendar cannot auto-update based on user input.
1. Create the Header for the Calendar
Now, let’s begin.
- Open a new Google Sheet by clicking here
- Select the cells from A1 to G1
- Hover over the toolbar section and click on the Merge cells icon
- Type “January 2023”
- Change the alignment of text to the middle
- Increase the font size to 18
- Make the font Bold and Italic
- Change the cell background color to green (Hex Code – #00ac47)
- Change the font color to white (Hex Code – #ffffff)
Our calendar header should look like below after following the above steps.
2. Fill in the Weekdays
For weekdays, we will choose Sunday as the first day of the week.
- Click on the cell “A2”
- Type “Sunday” as the first day of the week
- Next, select the cell “B2”
- Type “Monday”
- Select the cell A2 and B2, then hover to the lower-rightmost corner of the cell B2 until you see the “+” icon
- Click on that “+” icon and drag it till the cell “G2”
- All weekdays will be automatically populated
- Select all the cells from A2 to G2, as shown below
- Change the alignment of text to the middle
- Make the font Bold
- Change the cell background color to green (Hex Code – #00ac47)
- Change the font color to white (Hex Code – #ffffff)
Here is what the final output will look like,
3. Fill in dates for the first week
We are creating this calendar for 2023. The first date of January 2023 starts on Sunday.
Let’s fill in the dates for January.
- Select the cell “A3” (which is the first cell below the Sunday)
- Type “1”
- Next, click on the cell “B3”
- Type “2”
- Select the cell A3 and B3. Hover to the lower-rightmost corner of the cell B3 until you see the “+” icon
- Click on the “+” icon and drag it to the cell “G3”
- All dates for the first week of January will be automatically populated
- Select all the cells from A3 to G3 again
- Change the alignment of text to the right
- Increase the font size to 11
- Make the font Bold
- Change the cell background color to light green (Hex Code – #d9ead3)
- Next, select all the cells from A4 to G4
- Hover to the lower side of the fourth row until you see the expand button
- Increase the height of the fourth row, as shown below
- Now, select the cell A3 and A4
- Go to the toolbar section
- Click on the Border icon
- Select “Outer border” by clicking on the fifth option
- Change the border color to gray (Hex Code – #cccccc)
- Next, apply this border formatting to the next date, which is the 2nd of January
- Select the A3 and A4
- Go to the toolbar section and click on the “Paint format” button
- Hover to the cell B3 and click on it. The border formatting will be applied to both cells B3 and B4
- Repeat the above three steps for the rest of the dates of the week
After following the steps above, you will have the first week of January as shown below.
Note that we have selected only one cell for each date where you can add tasks, events, meetings, and birthdays. If you want, then you can select multiple cells.
4. Fill in dates for the rest of the weeks
To fill in dates for the remaining weeks of January 2023, you need to follow the same steps discussed in the previous section.
First, we add the dates, then change the formatting, and second, we increase the height of the cells below those dates.
Here’s what the calendar will look like for January Month.
5. Add Notes section at the end of the Calendar
This is a crucial step where you create the space for adding the monthly goals, milestones, or any notes.
We will create the Notes section at the end of the calendar.
- Select the cells from A14 to G14
- Go to the toolbar section and click on the Merge Cells icon
- Type “Notes”
- Select the cells from A15 to G15
- Merge them using the Merge cells icon from the toolbar section
- Repeat the steps 4 and 5 for the next 3-4 rows
- Select all the merged cells
- Hover to the toolbar section and click on Borders icon
- Choose the fifth option to create the outer border
- Change the border color to green (Hex Code – #00ac47)
- Now, select the first merged cell that contains the heading “Notes”
- Increase the font size to 13
- Change the font color to green (Hex Code – #00ac47)
- Click on the Borders icon from the toolbar section
- Select the fifth option to create the outer border
- Change the border color to green (Hex Code – #00ac47)
- Select the second merged cell
- Click on the Borders icon from the toolbar section
- Choose the ninth option to create a bottom border
- Change the bottom border color to gray (Hex Code – #cccccc)
- Repeat the above two steps for the remaining merged cells of the Notes section
Here’s what our Notes section of the calendar will look like.
With this step, our calendar for the first month of the year is done.
6. Create the remaining months of the year
For February, March, and all the remaining months of the year, you can simply duplicate the spreadsheet in which we have created the calendar for January month.
Let’s create the calendar for February month. Follow the steps below:
- Hover to the lower end of the Google Sheet
- Right-click on the spreadsheet name
- Select the “Duplicate” from the popup
- A new spreadsheet will be created
- Double-click on the name of the spreadsheet as shown below and type “February”
- Change the header name to February 2023
- Delete all the numbers by selecting and pressing “Delete” button on your keyboard as shown below
- Next, as the first day of February 2023 starts on Wednesday, we will click on the cell “E3” and type “1”
- Fill in the remaining dates based on the previous step
Repeat the above steps for the remaining months. All you have to do is enter the dates after duplicating the first spreadsheet.
You can download the Google Sheets Calendar we just created using the steps above.
The Google Sheet contains twelve separate spreadsheets for each month of the year.
You can add your brand logo to give this Google Sheets calendar a personal touch. Make sure to use the formatting capabilities of Google Sheets while adding tasks, events, meetings, and more to your calendar.
How to Create a Mini Yearly Calendar using Google Sheets
Mini Calendar contains all the 12 months in one spreadsheet. Refer to the following image.
The minimal design gives a quick view of the year.
You can highlight specific dates using different colors to mark birthdays, meetings, holidays, and events.
They are mostly used as printables. You can customize them as per your needs, add a logo to represent your brand and print them to put on your office desk. It adds a personal touch to the calendar.
There are two methods to create a mini calendar.
METHOD #1 – Create a Mini Calendar using Google Sheets Calendar Template Addon
It is the quickest way of creating a mini calendar in Google Sheets.
All you need to do is install the Google Sheets Calendar Template Addon. It is an official addon by AddonForge, which is trusted by millions of users.
As of August 2023, the addon allows you to create a calendar for 2022, 2023, and 2024. The calendar also marks public holidays for the selected year.
After installing the addon, follow the steps below to create a calendar in Google Sheets:
- Open a new Google Sheet by Clicking here
- Go to the main menu and click on the “Extensions” tab
- Choose “Calendar templates” from the popup
- Select “Start” from the next popup
- A new dialog box will be displayed on the left side of the screen, as shown below
- The addon will ask you to drop a review close that screen by clicking on the cross button at the upper-rightmost corner of the screen
- Select the year”2023” by clicking on the dropdown beside the “Year” option
- Next, choose the start day for the week by clicking on the dropdown beside the “First week day” option
- Click on the “Create Calendar” button
A calendar will be instantly created for the selected year.
Note that the “CW” column represents the calendar weeks. In simple words, it reflects the number of the week with respect to the selected year.
It is a pretty basic calendar that uses simple color codes and font styles. You can use Google Sheets formatting options to change the font type, size, cell color, and more.
Let’s adjust the formatting for the January month,
- Increase the width of the second row
- Change the cell background color to green (Hex Code – #00ac47)
- Increase the font size to 14 and make it bold
- Align the text to the middle
- Change the font color to white (Hex Code – #ffffff)
- Next, we will delete the CW column as it doesn’t add much value to our calendar at this moment
- Change the weekday cell background color to dark gray (Hex Code – #44546a)
- Make weekday the font bold
- Change the font color to white (Hex Code – #ffffff)
- Select all the cells that contain the dates for the January month and change the cell background color to light green, as shown below
- Now, let’s highlight the holidays on the 2nd and 16th of January
- Select the cell containing 2nd January and change the cell background color to dark purple (Hex Code – #6a78d1)
- Change the font color to white (Hex Code – #ffffff)
- Make the font bold
- Repeat the process from steps 11 to 13 to change the formatting of 16th January
- Change the border color to light gray, as shown below
Here is what the January month will look like,
Apply this formatting to the rest of the months, and make sure to delete the CW column as we did in step 5.
The final output will be as follows,
METHOD #2 – Create a Mini Calendar from Scratch
In the previous method, we used Google Sheets Addon, which populated the dates for the respective year automatically.
Now, let us create the calendar from scratch using Google Sheets formatting options and formulas.
For the sake of this article, we will assume that our task is to create a mini printable calendar for our team at SoftwareAccountant. It should look like below.
1. Create A Header for the Calendar
Before we go for the header, let’s adjust the column width as shown below.
The header section includes our logo and the keyword “2023 Calendar.”
- Open a new Google Sheet by clicking here
- Select the first row
- Increase the height of the row as shown below
- Select the first row and change the background color to light gray (Hex Code – #e8efef)
- Click on the cell “J1”
- Hover to the main menu and click on “Insert” tab
- Select the “Image” option from the popup
- Next, choose “Insert image over cells”
- A new dialog box will open
- Click on the “Browse” button or simply drag and drop the logo file
(The supported image file format includes PNG, JPG, JPEG, and GIF. Also, make sure to upload a file that has a size less than 50MB.) - Click on the cell “M1”
- Enter “2023 Calendar”
- Hover to the toolbar section below the main menu
- Increase the font size to 28
- Make it bold
- Change the color to dark cyan (Hex Code – #5579ac)
Make sure to resize the logo image in the proper aspect ratio.
Here is how the final output will look.
2. Create a Calendar for the First Month of the year
Now, let’s start with the first month of the year.
We are creating this calendar considering Sunday as the start day of the week.
Step #1 – Getting the dates and weekdays
- Click on the cell “B3” and type January
- Click on the cell “B4” and type “Sun”
(Note that instead of using the full name for the weekdays, we will use three-letter abbreviations.) - Now, click on the cell “C4” and type “Mon”
- Repeat the above steps for the rest of the weekdays
- As January 2023 starts on Sunday, we will select the cell “B5” and type “1”
- Next, click on the “C5” and type “2”
- Select the cell B5 and C5
- Hover to the lower-rightmost corner of the cell “C5” until you see the “+” icon. Next, click on that “+” icon and drag the mouse cursor to the cell “H5” which contains the final weekday (Saturday)
- Now, move to the next row and click on cell “B6”
- Put the next numerical value by referring to the previous row. In this case, it will be “8” as the previous row ends with the number “7”
- Select the cell “C6” and type “9”
- Next, fill in the remaining dates for the second week. Use the “+” icon that appears when you hover to the lower-rightmost corner of the cell “C6”. You need to click and drag this plus icon to the cell “H6”
- Repeat steps 6 to 10 and complete the calendar as shown below
Step #2 – Formatting the calendar
- Select the seven columns from B to H, as shown below
- Increase the height of the third row
- Hover to the toolbar section and click on the Merge Cells icon
- Now, you will see that the name “January” is at the right side of the merged cell
- Hover to the toolbar section and change the text alignment to middle
- Increase the font size to 13
- Change the cell background color to dark cyan (Hex Code – #5579ac)
- Change the font color to white (Hex Code – #ffffff)
- Select all the cells containing the weekdays
- Move the text to middle
- Make it bold
- Change the cell background color to green (Hex Code – #00ac47)
- Change the font color to white (Hex Code – #ffffff)
- Select all the cells, including the name January, Weekdays, and dates for the month
- Hover to the toolbar section and click on the Borders icon
- Select the first option
- Change the border color as shown below
- Finally, we will reduce the size of the column to make our calendar compact and beautiful
- Select the columns from B to H
- Hover to the right-most side of any selected column until you see the expand icon
- Reduce the size to 30% of the regular cell width, as shown above
3. Create the remaining months of the year
The process we followed above for January month can be used to create the remaining months of the year.
Here is how the final output should be,
Click on the link below to download and use the calendar we created.
SoftwareAccount 2023 Google Sheets Mini Calendar
FAQs
Q. Can I print a Google Sheets Calendar?
Yes, you can print Google Sheets calendar.
Hover to the main menu and click the “File” button. Next, choose the “Print” option from the popup.
A new dialog box will appear. Configure the print settings as per your requirements and click on the “Next” button at the top.
Q. How do I create a dynamic calendar in Google Sheets?
You can create a dynamic yearly and monthly Google Sheets calendar. But note that it requires expert knowledge of Google Sheet formulas and features.
We suggest using the Google Sheets Calendar Template, which automatically updates based on the selected year.
Click on the following link to access our list of the best Google Sheets Calendar Templates. Click Here!
Q. How do you type a new line within the cell? Is it possible?
Adding a new line within a cell is pretty straightforward. It will help you add multiple tasks, events, and more within one cell.
Use the following shortcut,
ALT + ENTER
It moves the cursor to the new line within the same cell.
Q. Can I create personal calendars in Google Sheets?
Yes, anyone can create a personal Google Sheets calendar to reflect their brand or personality.
The spreadsheet program allows you to add your logo, change the font colors, cell background color, and more.
Final Words
Google Sheets calendars are perfect for managing tasks, tracking marketing campaigns, adding birthdays, marking due dates, and more.
I hope you learned the steps to create a calendar in Google Sheets. In case of any doubts or if you are stuck somewhere, feel free to comment below.
You don’t have to be a spreadsheet pro to create the calendars discussed above.
There are plenty of ready-to-use templates to manage tasks and events on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis. Check out our article about the Best Google Sheets Calendar Templates of 2023.