Create and Insert Calendar in Excel
Inserting Calendar is a useful feature provided by Excel. It will become more useful when you are working on a shared worksheet where you will have to enter date very often. This will help you to reduce your time in doing manual entries, remember about the format, etc.
Inserting a calendar in excel will help you to resolve these problems. You just need to insert a drop-down calendar and select the date from there.
Steps to Insert & Create Calendar in Excel
Following are the ways to insert and create a calendar in Excel:
#1 – Inserting Calendar based on Templates available in Excel
There are a number of Excel Calendar templates available in Excel. You can choose any one of them according to the requirement by following the below steps.
Click on Files Select New Search for Calendar in the search box. This will show you a number of Excel calendar templates by categories i.e. Seasonal Photo Calendar, Academic Calendar, Any Year Calendar, etc. See the screenshot below to know how to insert free excel calendar templates.
#2 – Inserting Seasonal Photo Calendar in Excel
Click on File and Select New search “Seasonal Photo Calendar” from the search box
Select the Calendar and Click on Create.
It will look like this.
Enter Year below Year Cell and it will automatically update the calendar for that year.
All the 12 sheets with month name will be updated according to the year entered in January Sheet. Week start date can be select as Sunday or Monday (This will update the first cell of the calendar as Sunday or Monday).
Note: Enter formula =YEAR(TODAY()) in a cell below the Year cell. This will show you the current year Calendar whenever you will open it.
You can follow the above steps and search calendar from Excel online template according to your requirement and start working on it.
Want to know more about these functions –
#3 – Using Date Picker Control
Date Picker Control is ActiveX Control which can be found under Excel Developer Tab. This is normally hidden and can’t be seen directly under ActiveX controls. You need to explore the ActiveX Controls.
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Below are the steps to enter Date Picker control:
First, check if the Developer tab is there in Menu Bar. If you can’t see the Developer tab then follow the below-given steps.
Go to File Menu and click Options
Select a customized ribbon in excel and check the Developer option.
You can see the Developer Tab in the Menu bar.
Click on insert under Developer tab (It will look like setting button).
A dialogue box (More Control) will open as below. Search for Microsoft date and Time Picker control 6.0 (SP6) and select it. Click Ok.
When you select Microsoft date and Time Picker control 6.0 (SP6) it will enter a drop-down Calendar. 
You can select the desired date whatever you would like to select. For that, first, you have to turn off the Design Mode.
You can move your calendar to the desired cell. Right-click on date picker and move it to the desired cell.
Example of Date and Time Picker
Below is the example to use Date and Time Picker.
Suppose you need to get the difference between two dates. Enter one date picker in Cell A2 and another in cell C2.
Excel cannot recognize the value of a date picker control. Link your date picker controls to certain cells in the following way to fix this:
Select first date picker and under the developer, tab clicks on properties.
In Properties, at LinkedCell type A2. This will Link your date picker control to A2 cell.
Similarly, link the second date picker to the cell C2.
Now enter the formula =C2-A2 in Cell E2. Select date from both date picker.
We have selected 1/1/2019 in Date picker 1 and 2/23/2019 in Date picker 2. Now we enter formula =C2-A2 in Cell E2.
This will calculate the difference between the selected dates.
Calculate the days between both the date and the result is 53.
Here we don’t need to worry about the format and don’t care about manual date writing. we just need to click on the dropdown list in excel and this will show Calendar. We just need to select a date from there.
How to Install Third-Party Add-ins for Excel Calendar?
Go to google, search for the given third-party add-ins then download and install it.
After Installation, you can see this third party add-in in excel Menu Bar.
The above image is a screenshot of Ablebit’s tools.
Under Ablebits Tools, Click on Date picker and this will activate Date Picker.
Now enter any date in desired cells. A date picker pop-up will show at the top right corner of that cells.
Click on the pop-up and Select desired date and start working.
Ablebits Date Picker Tools Additional Options
Use ^ to go to the previous month and another button to go to next month. Click August 2018 to select another month or year directly instead of moving month one by one.
Things to Remember
- Microsoft Date and Time picker are available on 32-bit Windows only.
- If you are using a 64-bit version then you will not be able to use Date and Time Picker.
- For a 64-bit version, you need to use Third Party External Add-ins Tools for your Excel.
- Some of the third-party Add-ins available in the market are Excel Date Picker, Ablebits Date Picker, Popup Calendar add-in, etc.
- Installing third-party add-ins is very easy and user-friendly. Just download and install it and you are all set to use the tool.
Recommended Articles
This has been a guide to Excel Insert Calendar. Here we discuss how to insert and create a calendar in excel using various methods like date picker controller and third-party add-ins, etc. You can learn more about excel functions from the following articles –
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