Microsoft Excel is a powerful spreadsheet program for organizing daily or weekly tasks. It allows you to create an incredible weekly calendar, which helps you manage your time efficiently and stay organized.
Whether you need it for personal planning, scheduling tasks, or school assignments, an Excel weekly calendar template is a great solution.
List all the activities or tasks you should be doing and assign the start and end times for each.
A weekly calendar consists of days of the week placed across the horizontal axis and the time of day divided into hours across the vertical axis, as you might have seen in a Google calendar.
This is a quick guide to creating a free Weekly Calendar template using Excel. We’ll keep the instructions simple and easy to follow, so even if you’re new to Excel, you can create a functional and visually appealing calendar.
Download the FREE Excel Weekly Calendar Template
If you’re short on time and don’t want to build an Excel Weekly Calendar from scratch, you can download our ready-made, customizable template.
Once downloaded, you can customize the template to fit your unique requirements.
How to build a Weekly Calendar in Excel
Creating a weekly calendar in Google Sheets is easy. You need to know a few built-in formulas, and formatting skills are a plus.
Look at the following template,
The template may look simple to you, but in fact, it is fully automated and uses built-in formulas.
As you might have noticed from the above image, our Weekly Calendar has two main sections: the Navigator and the Table.
In the Navigator section, you can define the week and specify the start time of your day along with the standard time intervals for dividing your daily schedule.
The second section includes two segments: Horizontal and Vertical sections. The Horizontal section holds the time, and the Vertical one has the day of the week.
Now, let’s begin the process of creating a weekly calendar.
STEP #1 – Design the Navigator for the Weekly Calendar
The Navigator section of a weekly calendar is crucial as it allows you to define the week you want to manage, set the start time for each day, and choose the time intervals.
We will not use formulas here, but we will format each cell properly with the necessary data validations.
Let’s begin,
- Open a blank Excel spreadsheet
- Select the cell “B3”
- Type “Week Start Date”
- In the cell C3, type “Day Start Time”
- In the cell D3, type “Interval”
- Select the column B to D and increase the width as shown below,
- Next, select all the cells from B3 to D3
- Change the cell background color to green
- Change the font color to white
- Make the font bold
- Change the font alignment to the middle
- Increase the height of the 2nd row
Here’s how the navigator header looks,
Make sure to use the same headers or at least relevant ones to avoid future confusion.
Next, under the “Week Start Date” header, we will define the date on which the week starts. I am following the United States date formatting, which begins with month followed by day and year (mm/dd/yyyy). You can set the formatting according to your preference.
For example, in my case, January 8th, 2023, will be represented as 1/8/2023.
To check the format of the entered date, you can check the dropdown box displaying “Date” at the top of the toolbar under the “Home” tab, as shown below.
Another indication of a valid date is that it is aligned to the right of the cell, showing that the entered date is recognized as valid.
Now, for the time, we will use the Data Validation feature in Excel to create a dropdown containing predefined values.
Add a new spreadsheet using the “+” icon at the lower-leftmost side of the screen. Don’t forget to name this new spreadsheet “Date and Interval Values.”
In the new spreadsheet, we will create a table as shown below. Make sure to add the headers for further reference.
These entries will act as the data source for our dropdown. Now, let us use the Data Validation and create a dropdown,
- Go back to our main spreadsheet
(In my case, it is named as “Weekly Calendar”) - Click on the cell below the “Day Start Time”
- Hover to the main menu and click on “Data” tab
- Select the “Data validation” as shown below
- A new dialog box will appear on the screen
- In the Data Validation dialog box, make sure you are on the “Settings” tab
- In the “Allow” dropdown menu, select “List”
- In the “Source” box, enter your list of options separated by commas or select all the time values in the “Time and Date Intervals” sheet
- After selecting your list of options, click on “OK”
You will observe a small dropdown icon displayed in the cell below the column header “Day Start Time”.
Similarly, use the Data Validation to create a dropdown for the “Interval”.
- Click on the cell below the “Interval”
- Click on the “Data” tab in the main menu
- Select “Data Validation” from the available options
- Make sure you are in the “Settings” tab
- Select the “List” option from the “Allow” dropdown
- In the “Source” box, enter your list of options separated by commas or select all the interval values in the “Time and Date Intervals” sheet
- After selecting your list of options, click on “OK”
That’s it.
Our Navigator section of the Weekly Calendar is done. Please ensure you are using the proper date and time format if your Navigator section differs from ours.
Here are the steps,
- Select the cells “C3” and “D3”
- Hover to the main menu and click on the “Home” tab
- Go to the “Number” formatting section as shown below,
- Click on the dropdown
- Choose the “Time” option from the list
Our Navigator table should look like below,
Step #2 – Create the Horizontal Section of the Table
To create the horizontal section of the table, we will require two rows, one for the day and the other one for the date, as shown below,
All the cells from the above two rows are dynamic. They are calculated based on the value in the cell B3.
Here, we will use the TEXT function in Excel. This function converts a numeric value to a text string in a desired format.
The syntax of the TEXT function is as follows,
=TEXT(value, format_text)Where,
- The “value” argument needs to be replaced with the numeric value to be converted to text. It can be a number, date, or cell reference containing a numeric value or date.
- The “format_text” argument lets users define the output format. But make sure to enclose the input in double quotations.
Note that Cell B3 contains the Week Start Date. We will use this date to generate the weekdays and populate them across the Horizontal section.
Start by selecting cell “B7,” where our first date of the week will be displayed. As the value in cell “B7” should be similar to the value in cell “B3” defined by the users, we will use the equal (=) operator to match the cell values.
=B3Copy and paste the above formula in B7 to get the users’ exact date, which is provided in cell B3.
Now, we will use the Text function to get the day from the date.
- Select the cell “B6”
- Type “=TEXT”
- Choose the first option from the popup or press “Tab” on your keyboard
- Now, select the cell reference as “B7” as our date values are in B7
- Press “,” on your keyboard to move to the next argument
- Next, put “dddd” in the place of the “format” argument to get the day
(Make sure you enclose the format in double quotation marks) - End the formula with closing parenthesis “)”
- Press the “Enter” key
Here is the formula,
=TEXT(B7,"dddd")It will instantly display Sunday as the starting date of the week using the data available in cell B6.
For the next date, which is going to be our second of the week, as shown below, we will increment the value in “B7” by “1”.
Our formula will be as follows,
=B7+1Copy and paste this formula into the cell C7.
To get the name of the second day of the week, we will use the TEXT function, as discussed in step 2 of this section.
Our formula will be as follows,
=TEXT(C7,"dddd")Repeat the above process to get the remaining dates and days of the week.
Let us improve the aesthetics of the header by changing the cell background color to green and font color to white. We also change the font alignment to the middle.
Our final output would be as follows,
STEP #3 – Create the Vertical Section of the Table
The vertical section divides each day of the week into hours. The values here depend upon the “Day Start Time” and “Interval” defined by the users.
We will be using the TIME function for this purpose.
The TIME function in Excel is used to create a time value based on specified hours, minutes, and seconds. It is helpful for constructing time values that can be used in calculations, comparisons, and formatting.
The General Syntax of the TIME function is as follows,
=TIME(hour,minute,second)All arguments of the above function are self-explanatory. Let’s use the time function to get the time of the day in the first column.
The first cell’s value (A8) is supposed to be the same as C3, where users select the Day Start Time. We will use the Equal operator to execute this task. Our final formula will be as follows,
=C2Copy and paste the above formula in A8.
As you might have noticed from the table, we are not directly dividing our day into single hours. Instead, we use 15, 30, and 45-minute intervals for each hour.
Refer to the following image.
For this logic to work for our vertical section, we will increment the time in cell A9 by the user-defined interval.
We will use the TIME function here.
IMPORTANT – Necessary Adjustment
But before proceeding further, we need to make a necessary adjustment. As mentioned earlier, the TIME function only accepts integer values.
If you check the formatting of cell D3, you will notice that it is a plain text format due to the text “MIN” in the cell.
So, to get the integer number for the interval, we will use the cell D4 right below the D3. Copy and paste the formula in cell D4 to get an integer number from D3.
=LEFT(D3,2)The LEFT function will extract the first two digits from the cell D3.
Now that we have an integer value for the interval let us use the TIME function to increment the time in cell A9.
Here’s the formula,
=A8+TIME(0,(D4),0)As you may have noticed, we have put “0” for hours and seconds. The minutes are taken from cell D4.
The results will be as follows.
Repeat the above process for the remaining cells. To create the vertical section of the table, choose the lowest time interval.
For the sake of this article, I have assumed the time of the day till 6:00 PM only. You can go beyond that by following step 2.
STEP #4 – Checking the Formatting
This step is not that important, but it will surely help you improve the aesthetics and ease of use of your weekly calendar.
Navigator Section
The navigator section should look similar to the following,
Make sure to change the cell background color (green) and text color (white) properly.
Change the Date format in cell B3 and the time format in cell C3.
Horizontal Section
Here, we can change the background color for each day of the week.
Make sure to use the proper formatting for the day and date. We have already discussed using the appropriate date and day format in steps 1 and 2 above.
Vertical Section
This section contains time only. So, just make sure to use the proper formatting to display the time, as discussed in step 3.
#OUTPUT
Here is the screenshot of the Weekly Calendar output we designed from scratch by following the above steps.
If you wish to download the Excel Weekly Calendar Template created by us, click on the following link.
We have used our knowledge and formatting skills to create the following Excel Weekly Calendar template. You can download it for free and customize it according to your preference.
