Excel Monthly Personal Planner

[Sharpe411]

I've downloaded the Monthly Personal Planner, but it only has 8 months listed.  How do I add more months to the dropdown list?  I can't even find the list anywhere in the template.  This template is useless to me if I can't add months.  Thanks. 

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@Sharpe411 Oh my! Yet another example of a calendar template that isn't very useful. Looks fancy with the spiral wire to mimic a paper calendar, assuming that the workbook attached is the template you are using.

Begin by right-clicking on the Tab name "Monthly Planner" and press Unhide. Now you can unhide the Lists tab and you'll see the 8 months that feed the drop down box. These 8 months are dynamic though. 2 months back and 6 months forward from the current month. I guess the designer thought that would be sufficient. If you want 12 months, expand the list, making sure that the formulae that calculate the month and year are updated correctly.

Now that you have the "12-month calendar" (see attached), don't think you can do much with it. All you have is a digital representation of just "a paper calendar". Print each month, on-by-one, and start writing down your notes on the hard copies. The template has no built in functionality that allows you to store notes by date that can be displayed for the chosen month. Your choice, though.

[#3]

Thank you! This is perfect!

[#4]

When I add the formula to the next cell changing to the next higher number in the lists tab, it shows up on that list but doesn't appear in the drop down box in the monthly planner. Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong?

[#5]

@jimb390 

You need to change the range referred to in Name Manager so that it includes that new row in the Data Validation dialog box.
By the way, that is but one of several major deficiencies of this template, as @Riny_van_Eekelen hinted in his first reply when this thread was started last year. All this does is produce a blank calendar to be printed and then written on; it does not store entries by month and day. You're better off using the calendar software that comes with your computer.

[#6]

@mathetes 

Here is what I want to accomplish. 

[#7]

@jimb390 

Does this go in the right direction?

[#8]

Yes but I still don't understand how to add additional months in the drop down list. I'm just using in a small all vounteer library. Nothing complicated.

[#9]

@jimb390 How to expand the list of months was explained in my original post and clarified by John in his last. Needed to refresh my memory a bit and are again amazed by the complexity of an otherwise useless template. But, if it works for you that's good enough.

Took the liberty of changing your file a little bit. Now the Sundays (closed) at least show the correct dates, deleted som unused columns and I expanded the list of months to 2 years ahead and made a bit more dynamic. The key here is that, if you want to change this yourself, that the named range called List_Months is updated in the Name Manager accordingly.

In the picture above you can see that it currently points to the range B1:B27 on the Lists sheet. I also got rid of some names that caused #REF errors due to the fact that you had deleted a few columns from the original template.

If you need more guidance on how to work with Dropdown lists (i.e. Data Validation) and the Name Manager, I suggest you start be reading the articles in the links below.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/apply-data-validation-to-cells-29fecbcc-d1b9-42c1-9d76-ef... 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-the-name-manager-in-excel-4d8c4c2b-9f7d-44e3-a3b4-9f6... 

[#10]

Thanks for your help. I would never have figured that out. I realize it is an outdated template but it works for me.