Welcome to Calendar Maker (CM), an Excel 3.0 spreadsheet which allows you to print monthly calendars for any month you choose. You can enter (or paste) a list of events for the coming year(s), and CM will place each in the appropriate date box when that month's calendar is shown or printed. Macros allow automatic printing of calendars for the current month, the remainder of the year, or any range of months you desire. Calendars are full page, landscape format. Since you have (obviously) already loaded CM into Excel, make sure that you also open 'CM.macros'. (It's hidden, so don't expect to see it on-screen.) In the future, you can automatically open both by choosing 'Calendar Maker startup'.
Use of CM is very simple & straightforward. Cell B2 contains the starting date of the calendar. It should be set to TODAY(), which will give you the upcoming month, plus the beginning of the current week. Enter any date in place of TODAY(), and a new calendar will be shown. Choosing 'Print...' from the File menu will allow you to print the calendar currently on-screen. (Choose 'Page Setup', select landscape orientation and click OK before printing for the first time.)
The CM.macros do 4 specific things:
1) Print a single month
2) Print a range of months (ie, 5 months starting 2/1/92)
3) Print 'til the end of the year
4) Prepare a range of cells containing dates & events to be utilized by CM's lookup functions. The list may be pasted from a datebook or appointment application, or entered by hand.
For actions 1-3 above, just click the appropriate button at the top of the worksheet. If you want to see a page preview before printing the first calendar, click the Preview checkbox. It will automatically shut off after the first calendar is printed.
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EVENT LOOKUP
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In order to paste the dates and events from a datebook application, it must generate a list formatted as:
date(tab)event(return)
date(tab)event(return), etc
DON'T TYPE EVENTS DIRECTLY INTO THE DATE BOXES!! There are lookup functions in the cells which do that automatically for you.
I use (and love) Remember? 2.1, a DA by David Warker that makes this extra easy. If you use this gem, just open it, choose "Browse Occasion file", and select the list you want to paste into CM. Click on the first event, then Shift-drag to highlight the entire list. Choose Copy, then click in the CM window to activate Excel. Choose Options/Unprotect document (no password is needed). Press Command-G (goto), then double-click on "Sort_start". Press Command-V (or Edit/Paste) to paste the dates/events. Quick & easy! If you want to add another list, click on the cell just below the last one you pasted (in column A), and choose Edit/Insert paste.. , Shift cells down to paste them in.
If you prefer, you may type them in manually, with dates in column A, and the corresponding event in column B. Either way, Excel's lookup functions will only find the first occurrence of a date, then retrieve its corresponding event. So there is a macro to sort the entries, and string together multiple events from the same day into one cell. After you've entered all the events for the current year (or however long you want), choose Macro/Run, then double-click on Clean_n_Sort (or press Command-option-a). You can watch as Excel does it's thing. Once it's done, the appropriate events will automatically show up in the date boxes they belong.
IMPORTANT!
Due to the way Excel pastes data into it's worksheets, dates/events which are pasted in without specifying a particular year (day/mo only, ie, 4/15) will assume the current year. This means that all your events will be accurate for the remainder of the year, but will not show up in the next or previous year. If this is a problem, immediately after pasting the date/events, while they're still selected, choose Formula/Replace, then replace 1991 with 1992 (or whatever), then click Replace All. If you want both years (or more), paste another copy of of the date/event range below the first, then replace the dates as above (with, say 1993). After entering all the appropriate dates, etc, run the Clean_n_Sort macro to fix it all up, then voilá!
The worksheet is protected from inadvertant changes with Excel's 'Protect document' function. To see the formulas which make CM tick, or to make any changes (other than the starting date or dates/events), choose Options/Unprotect Document. There is no password needed, but be careful.
Calendar Maker does not currently support a way to easily enter recurring events, like 2nd Thursday of the month or last Monday in September. I’m sure it can be done, so if anyone out there does find a way (most likely as part of the Clean_n_Sort macro), please drop me a line so I can incorporate it (and credit where it’s due) into future releases.
