How to (Easily) Make Perfect Content Calendars in Google Sheets

And have you ever thought about creating a functional calendar with Google Sheets?

If you often work on campaigns for a few different customers, creating individual calendars in Google Sheets can be especially useful to make sure the customer understands when certain content is going live. Alternatively, you may need to create an internal Google Sheet calendar for your team to keep track of upcoming projects.

Creating a calendar in a tool commonly used for spreadsheets sounds a little intimidating, but don’t worry, the process is actually pretty intuitive. With the help of a few tips, you can easily create a functional calendar that you can synchronize your schedule with.

Here’s how to make a calendar in Google Sheets and some tips to help you improve the design. In the end, your calendar will look something like this:

So start a new spreadsheet and get ready to create your own calendar. 📅

1. Open a new spreadsheet and select your month.

First, open a new table. Then delete the columns H – Z. They are not required.

Then choose your month. For this example, I chose January 2021, so I put that in the first cell. The special thing about Google Sheets is that dates are recognized automatically. So if you enter a month followed by the year in the YYYY format, it tells Google that you will be working with dates.

2. Start formatting your calendar.

Next, format your calendar. I selected the text in column A, row 1 in January 2021. I highlighted and clicked seven columns (AG) Merging so that this cell extends over the entire column. You can find this button to the right of the fill tool.

Here I also centered my text with the tool next to Merge. Then I increased the font size and printed the month in bold.

3. Enter the days of the week using a formula.

Next, enter the days of the week in each column (AG). You can do this manually, but I went with a formula. Sheets has a feature that allows you to enter formulas to perform certain actions at the same time.

To fill in the days of the week, in the cell where you want your first day of the week to be, type: = TEXT (1, “DDDD”). This tells Google that your number will be replaced with a date or time and the format you are using is days of the week.

Highlight the number 1 in the formula and replace it with: PILLAR(). Then press Enter and select your first day. You copy the formula into Sunday’s cell by dragging the selector to the end of your row (AG) and pressing Enter again.

Pressing Enter should automatically fill in the rest of the week. Remember, if this doesn’t work for you, you can always manually enter the days.

Pressing Enter should automatically fill in the rest of the week. Remember, if this doesn’t work for you, you can always manually enter the days.

4. Enter the numbers.

Excellent! You have your days of the week. Now we enter the numerical values. Before this step, I took the time to add color to the day line and changed the font to one that I liked a little better.

For the numeric values, we simply identify the first day of the month and Click and drag fill in the rest.

How?

Place the number 1 in the box just below the first day of the month, click and drag horizontally.

5. Enter the remaining numbers.

Note: In this step I put in the calendar numbers on every other line to help with formatting later.

After you’ve completed your first line, it’s time to fill in the rest. Then enter the next number manually under “Sunday” Click and drag horizontally to fill in the rest.

Repeat the process for the next lines. You enter the first number manually, click and drag down the line. This is how it looks for the next series in January.

Note: Make sure you end the month with the correct number! For January that would be January 31st.

6. If necessary, reformat your calendar.

Everything is starting to look like a calendar, isn’t it? At this point, I reformatted things to improve the look of my calendar a little.

Do you remember the extra lines between the numbered lines? I’ve expanded these lines to create boxes under the numbers. To do this, I just dragged the rows down to make those cells bigger.

Here are some additional formatting tips::

• Select the blank lines under your numbers and center them Use the middle text alignment tool.
• Choose your entire calendar and align vertically all elements so that they are in the center of their cells. Use the vertical alignment tool to do this.
• bold Your daily numbers.
• If desired, shade slightly Your numbered lines.
• If desired, gray out the Saturday and Sunday columns to make your working days stand out.

7. Add design elements to professionalize the look.

Finally, you can add some fun design elements to personalize the look of your calendar. If it’s a client or an upcoming project, include the required start days here.

For this step, I added some funny pictures, captured a few hypothetical calendar events, and played around with font sizes.

8. Repeat the process from February to December.

It’s time to repeat for the month of February through December. Just duplicate your January calendar once you’ve done it the way you want it to look. To do this, right-click the sheet’s tab and select duplicate from the menu.

To enter the numbers, all you need to do is know the starting day and then click and drag to fill in the remaining lines. Here are the first few days for each month for 2021:

• January: Friday
• February: Monday
• March: Monday
• April: Thursday
• Can: Saturday
• June: Tuesday
• July: Thursday
• August: Sunday
• September: Wednesday
• October: Friday
• November: Monday
• December: Wednesday

Next, you want to know how many days to fill in. Here is the number of days you will need for each month:

• January: 31
• February: 28 or 29
• March: 31
• April: 30
• Can: 31
• June: 30
• July: 31
• August: 31
• September: 30
• October: 31
• November: 30
• December: 31

And then you’re done!

Using Sheets is convenient because you can open your calendar right from your browser. You can also keep track of your schedule in a location separate from your phone.

Alternatively, you can create important business documents such as social and editorial calendars. Below, I am sharing a template that is perfect for the task.

Google Sheets calendar template

Here is an editorial calendar template for all of your editorial planning needs. Use this template to create a strong editorial strategy every day.

Recommended Resource: Free Editorial Calendar Templates

Download the free templates

Use a Google Sheets calendar to organize your tasks

If you’re familiar with Sheets and want to try it out, create a Google Sheets Calendar. This is a great option when you need to create a clean calendar to keep track of an internal marketing campaign, organize a client’s upcoming projects, or share a calendar of events with key stakeholders. However, if you don’t want to create one from scratch, use our editorial calendar template to start your planning and organizing efforts right away.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for completeness.