How to Design a Calendar in Microsoft Publisher

Microsoft Publisher offers a wealth of templates to design just about anything, including calendars. Using Publisher to make your own calendar gives you limitless design options and lets you customize it exactly how you want it. Publisher is an easy program to use when designing your own calendar.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Open Publisher on your computer and go to "File" and "New." The New Publications box will appear.

2. Click on the blue arrow next to "Publications" for "Print" to see a list of types of publications. Select "Calendars" and several templates will appear.

3. Double click on a template that you like and it will open on the screen. It will likely open up in the current month, but you can change this to any single month or create calendars for an entire year. Go to "Format" and "Calendar Options." Click on “Change Date Range” under “Month or Year,” and select the dates that you want. A separate calendar page will be created for each month.

4. Click in the boxes for each day to enter events onto the calendar.

5. Customize the template in any way that you like. Add in your own photos, clip art or other graphics. Add pertinent graphics to certain days to make the calendar more interesting. For example, you can add a pumpkin into the Oct. 31 box.

6. Add or delete text boxes as you like. Even though you are using a template, you can still add and delete within it.

7. Change the color and font schemes by clicking on the appropriate button in the "Calendar Options" box. Click on a color or font scheme that you like and the entire calendar will change.

8. Change the color or font of individual items by selecting that particular item. You can do this even if you have turned on a color or font scheme.

Tips & Warnings

• Because you can customize calendars in so many different ways, they make excellent gifts. Simply print them out on cardstock and make covers for the calendar.