One of the popular uses of Excel is to maintain a list of events, appointments or other calendar related stuff. While Excel shines easily when you want to log this data, it has no quick way to visualize this information. But we can use little creativity, conditional formatting, few formulas & 3 lines of VBA code to create a slick, interactive calendar in Excel. Today, lets understand how to do this.
But first, a reminder to join my Advanced Excel masterclass in USA
As you may know, I am running my first ever Advanced Excel & Dashboards Masterclass in USA this summer (May / June 2013). We will be doing 2 day interactive sessions on Excel, advanced Excel, interactive charts, pivot tables & dashboards in Chicago, New York, Washington (DC) & Columbus (OH). If you live near any of these cities and want to become awesome in Excel, please consider enrolling in my Masterclass.
Click here for details & to book your spot | Download Masterclass brochure
Back to the interactive calendar
Coming back to our topic at hand – interactive calendar, what do we mean by this?
Well, something like below:
How to create an interactive calendar from a set of events
1. Collect all the event data in a table
Just enter event data in a table like below:
2. Set up a calendar in a separate rate
If your events span several months, then you can use formulas to generate calendar.
In my case, all the events (Masterclass sessions) are in May & June 2013. So I just entered date of May 1st in a cell, dragged it sideways and then re-arranged the cells to make it look like a calendar. At this stage, the calendar should look like this:
3. Name the calendar range
This is simple. Select all the cells in calendar range and give a name to it. I called mine “calendar”.
4. Assign a cell for identifying which date is selected
Select a blank cell in your workbook, give it a name like “selectedCell”. We will use this to identify which date is selected by user.
5. Write Worksheet_selectionchange() event
This will help us identify when user selects a cell in “calendar” range. The below 3 line VBA should do. Please attach it to the sheet where your calendar is.
Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
If Not Application.Intersect(Target, Range("calendar")) Is Nothing Then
[selectedCell] = ActiveCell.Value
End If
End Sub
Tutorial: Showing details when user selects a cell
6. Set up the formulas to show details when a valid date is selected
Lets say, each event has 4 details associated with it – title, date, venue & description.
Now, we need to show details of the event when user selects a date in the calendar. Since the selected date is in “selectedCell”, we can use VLOOKUP, IF, IFERROR formulas to do this:
- Fetch event title in a cell if date selected has an event in it. Else keep it blank
-
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(selectedCell, table_of_events, event_title_column, false),"")
-
- Fetch rest of event details, but keep them blank if date has no events.
Lets say these 4 details are fetched to cells D1, D2, D3 & D4 cells.
7. In calendar sheet, add 4 text boxes and assign them to cells
Finally, in calendar sheet, add 4 text boxes. Assign them to D1, D2, D3 & D4 cells. Arrange and format them as you fancy.
Tip: to assign a cell to text box, just select the text box, go to formula bar and type =D1 press enter.
8. Set up conditional formatting to highlight selected dates
Finally, add a simple conditional formatting rule to highlight the selected dates in calendar. This is simple. Assuming calendar starts at cell A1,
- Select the calendar range
- Go to conditional formatting
- Add new rule
- Select rule type as “Use a formula to determine which cells to highlight”
- type the rule as =A1=selectedCell
- Set up formatting
PS: in my data above, I have used different formula as we need to highlight 2 dates of a Masterclass even when 1 is selected.
Tip: Introduction to conditional formatting.
9. Clean up and formatting
Clean up your worksheets and format the calendar so that it looks gorgeous. And you are done!
Download Interactive Calendar Example file
Click here to download interactive calendar example file and play with it to understand this better.
Examine the formulas in “Calcs” sheet & VBA code so that you can see how this is weaved.
Work with calendar data often, then you are in luck
If you use calendar data often and are looking for some inspiration, ideas & examples on how to represent it, then check out below examples:
- Employee vacation tracker & dashboard
- Creating perpetual calendar & event tracker in Excel
- Interactive pivot table calendar & chart in Excel
- Creating an interactive picture calendar
- Employee shift calendar template
- Annual goals tracker
Do you like the interactive calendar?
I often use interactive calendars in my dashboards & client projects. Since calendars are very natural way to understand events, they work really well.
What about you? Do you use calendars often? How do you like the above technique? Please share your thoughts & ideas using comments.
PS: And if you are waiting to become awesome in Excel, then wait no more. Book your spot in my upcoming Masterclass. Click here.
22 Responses to “Master Excel 2007 Ribbon with this Free Learning Guide”
Thank you, kind sir. Well done with the baby making.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001@hotmail.com. never a response.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001_at_hotmail_dot_com. never a response for either attempt.
@Doug, it shows that your email address is pending verification. Can you check your inbox (and may be spam folder too) for an email from me? The subject will be "Activate Subscription to Get your Free Excel Tips E-book"
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Very Useful Info..Keep it up..
@Ajay.. you are welcome 🙂
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I can't open this pdf. I get the error message:
You do not have the required license to open this file.
Please request a license from the creator of the file, and add it using the license manager and they try opening it again.
What gives??
I downloaded the file again and it worked this time. Strange. (First file was 116 KB, second was 1644 KB... ???)
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Hi Chandoo,
thanks for sharing your Excel 2007 learning experience with us; unfortunately the link to the pdf of the free Excel 2007 learning guide seems broken: my Acrobate Readers flags: "Unkown file type or corrupte data".
Have a nice day
Michael
well done this is great
Can somebody just provide a link the classic TAB exportedUI files for MS Office 2003 for us to use in office 2007/2010?. searching online, everybody just wnats to make a buck online with silly Classic Tab installers which do nothing more than inport exportedUI files for you.
Don't give me a ribbon how to guide, just give me free exportedUI files. I should not have to pay anyone for this, it is free XML, MS should have included this to begin with.
thanks
Dear.
There are a set of debit values and a set ot credit values in a column. I want a vba code by whcich the debit value plus a single / multiple credit value is zero that needs to be marked .
finally i will come to know out of the avaibale debits which cannot be used the with avilable credits either single or multiple values.
If multiple matching sets are available let it take the 1st or the 2nd one its not an issue.
Column A Ref
-1000 A
-5000 B
-8000 C
800 A
100 A
100 A
2000 B
3000 B
13000
15000
hi...
how to make this add-ins and display in ribbon... check this sample : http://www.cprsoft.com/GCDemo01.htm
thank you sir...
Please tell me format painter short cut key In excel ?
Thanks In Advance
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