There are many different uses for Microsoft Office, and one powerful potential feature that many people don’t utilize is the ability to create a custom calendar using Microsoft Excel.

Step #1: Start with the File tab on the right hand side and then click New

You will see a variety of options pop up and you may notice there are some calendar template options. While these can be useful in some situations, they don’t have quite the ability to customize as we’re looking for so you’ll actually want to click the Blank Workbook option (should be the very first one in the upper left-hand corner).

Step #2: Add weekday headers

Start on the second row of the spreadsheet. The first row will be used for something else, and we’ll get to that in just a moment. But start on row two and type in the days of the week – one per column. So Sunday in A, Monday in B, etc.

Once all seven have been typed in highlight all the weekdays you type in, go to the Home tab, then click format in the cells group. You then want to hit Column Width and set the width to 20. This guarantees enough space for each day and to create your future scheduling.

Bold the names of the weekdays if you prefer, otherwise that’s good for this portion.

Step #3: Calendar title

This is where the first blank row comes back into play. You will want to add the current month as the title of the calendar. Use the formula =TODAY(). After this, you’ll fix the format by going to the Home tab, hitting the Number group, and then hit the date drop down. Under More Number Formats you can then adjust the month format.

If you’re picky about making sure it is centered, highlight all the cells in row one and go to the Home tab where you will then want to click on “Merge & Center.” This will center the month.

Step #4: Building out the days

Creating the full calendar setup means you need to create solid borders to clearly distinguish the days from one another. Do this by highlighting the entire spreadsheet (title/header row included). Once you’ve done this you need to go to the Home tab and click the paint bucket that is underneath the Font size number. Select white as the background.

Highlight six cells under the Sunday header. Making sure they stay highlighted, you then want to go to the Home tab and click the borders icon before selecting the option for “Outside Borders.” You should see a solid border line around all six cells in that column.

Highlight that box, then copy and past under every other listed day header. As you copy this under each day the beginnings of a calendar should appear.

Step #5: Create the weeks

Once you have a single week of bordered days from copy and pasting the firs bordered day you then copy and create six weeks.

Step #6: Fill in the dates

Place 1 in the correct box depending on what day of the week the month starts on. Once you have two side by side, drag across and the numbers should fill in the rest of the week. Put a number in on Sunday the next week and repeat and you should be able to quickly fill out all the dates to the 30th or 31st.

That’s the monthly calendar. Copy and paste on 11 other sheets and adjust the starting date to create a yearly calendar. It’s just that easy!