J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Displaying An Annual Calendar

This morning I saw a post at the Microsoft Excel blog: How to Create a Perpetual Yearly Calendar in Excel. You can download the workbook, but you need to be running Excel 2007.

I created a similar workbook, that's actually much better. Download it here: Yearly Calendar Workbook.

The advantages:

• It works with all versions of Excel.
• It's much simpler, and doesn't use any named formulas.
• It displays the text in the language specified in the Windows Regional Control Panel
• You can easily change the appearance by modifying any or all of four named styles: MonthHeader, DayNames, DateCells, and Background.
• It's laid out better: Each row of months represents a quarter.
• The day dates are generated using array formulas, so the user cannot accidentally delete a formula.
• It doesn't go all the way up to the year 9999. Clicking the inside of the slider increments by 10 years rather than 500 years.
• It doesn't use a background image that make the calendar difficult to read.
• You don't have to validate your copy of Excel before you can download it.

Tip: If you use this workbook with Excel 2007, you should modify the four named styles so they use Office 2007 theme colors and fonts. Then you can change the look instantly by applying a different theme.