Best way to create a 12 month year-at-a-glance calendar

[tuqqer]

I've owned Office for years (2001 and now X), but have never used
Excel. But maybe this project is the place I start.

I've been looking around for an application that has a simple
year-at-a-glance calendar. None of the calendars I've used
(Entourage, AddressBook, etc) have a way to just pull up 12 months at
a time. I've done a search on VersionTracker, and couldn't find
anything that has this, which really surprised me. The reason I want
such a calendar view is that it helps me to just stare at the coming
12 months, all at once, and plan my life.

So, I'm thinking of making one myself, and I'm wondering if Excel
might be the best way. I could probably figure out how to make the
basic calendar, 4 months across, 3 months down, but it would be great
if I could then place that as a locked background, and then create
another identically celled map over the top, so that I could highlight
the days/weeks when major projects and trips are happening. I could
color code them with enough opaqueness so that the underlying calendar
and dates would show through.

Is this possible to do in Excel? Can you "layer" two celled thingies
on top of one another, so that the underlying one would show through?

Even better, anyone have an idea on how I could accomplish this? (or,
know of a program that already does this?)

Many thanks!

 

[Bernard Rey]

Basically this is easy to do. Just depends in how much you want to improve
it later (the Entourage calendar is really great and helpful)...

In Cell A1, type "January 2003"
In cell A2, type "01/01/2003" (without the quotes)
Then, in cell A3, type "=A2+1" (without the quotes)
Now, copy that cell (A3), then select cells from A4 to A32 and paste

You should now have a complete month of January. You can carry on with the
other months.

If you prefer, you can (of course) change the displaying in the cells. T do
that, select cells A2 to A32, pick the "Cells..." item from the "Format"
menu. From the "Customize" line put "d" (just the letter "d") in the "type"
field and then click "OK". Now your calendar should just display the days
dates as numbers

Well, you might like to have the Saturdays and Sundays bold. You'll have to
select the cells A2 to A32 again and, from the "Format" menu, pick the
"Conditional Formatting" item.

Toggle the content of the first field to "The formula is" then, in the field
next to this, type "=OR(WEEKDAY(A2)=7,WEEKDAY(A2)=1)".

Click on the "Format..." button below, and pick "Bold". Click "OK" on both
pop up windows and here you are.

You can't "layer" two cells (or two sheets). But you can easily set the
background color of a cell by clicking the paint bucket tool from the
toolbar (usually in yellow by default, but you can pick one from 40 colors
for the different matters you could need.

If you think of something else, just ask, we'll certainly find some other
answers


--
Bernard Rey - Toulouse / France
MVP - Macintosh


tuqqer wrote :

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I've owned Office for years (2001 and now X), but have never used
Excel. But maybe this project is the place I start.

I've been looking around for an application that has a simple
year-at-a-glance calendar. None of the calendars I've used
(Entourage, AddressBook, etc) have a way to just pull up 12 months at
a time. I've done a search on VersionTracker, and couldn't find
anything that has this, which really surprised me. The reason I want
such a calendar view is that it helps me to just stare at the coming
12 months, all at once, and plan my life.

So, I'm thinking of making one myself, and I'm wondering if Excel
might be the best way. I could probably figure out how to make the
basic calendar, 4 months across, 3 months down, but it would be great
if I could then place that as a locked background, and then create
another identically celled map over the top, so that I could highlight
the days/weeks when major projects and trips are happening. I could
color code them with enough opaqueness so that the underlying calendar
and dates would show through.

Is this possible to do in Excel? Can you "layer" two celled thingies
on top of one another, so that the underlying one would show through?

Even better, anyone have an idea on how I could accomplish this? (or,
know of a program that already does this?)

Many thanks!

I haven't tried this specifically, but you can probably layer the cells as
you wish by using the camera tool. Set up the calendar the way you want it
somewhere on the sheet. Now set up the area you wish to use for the data.
Then "photograph" one of the areas with the camera tool and "develop" the
picture on top of the other area.

 

[Barry Wainwright]

Open up the terminal and type 'cal 2003' (without the quotes).

More options at 'man cal'