This is a quick tutorial on how to create a calendar in Numbers for macOS. There are many ways to make a calendar on a Mac, but this is one of the easiest ones.
I assume you have Numbers open. In the “Choose a Template” dialog window scroll to the “Personal” section. Then click on the “Calendar” template which should be the first in the list.
Tip: If for some reason you don’t have a “Choose a Template” window when you open Numbers, the simplest way to get to it is to click on “Help” in the menu bar. Here, in the “Search” field type “New”. In the drop-down you should see “New from Template Chooser”. Click on it and follow the instructions in the previous paragraph.
The template I have looks like this. You might have something similar.
In my calendar template, the default year and month are not current. For you it might be the same. But we can easily update those values.
First, click on the month name. An arrow pointing down should appear on the right. Then, click the arrow and choose the month you want from that drop-down list. Next, double-click on the year to edit it. Now you probably noticed that the calendar has updated automatically. Isn’t it great?
I customized my calendar to make it more printer-friendly.
Like I mentioned in the beginning, it’s not too much work to make a calendar in Numbers. And that’s thanks to Apple providing a calendar template.
UPDATE:
Numbers Calendar With Weeks Starting On Monday
I recently received an email from a reader who was wondering how to make Monday the start of the week in the Numbers calendar template. The good news is that it’s possible to achieve this, the not so good news is that it takes a bit of work.
If you began updating your calendar template by changing the colors or fonts, remember to make a copy of you work so you don’t lose it in case something goes wrong.
First we need to uncover a bit of the “magic” of how this template works. To do that, click on the year cell. This should make the row numbers visible. Moving your mouse over the row numbers should reveal a small arrow. Clicking on that arrow will make a pop-up menu appear. From this menu choose “Unhide All Rows”. The following image will illustrate this process better.
Once these hidden rows are visible, we have to change the value of “Row 3” from 1 to 2. Why? Without getting too much into specifics, this value is used in a formula in a row below. In this formula “1” means the week starts on Sunday, while “2” signals the week begins on Monday.
Now, if you look at your calendar, you’ll notice that it’s no longer correct. That’s because we updated the days without updating the order of the day names. So we need to do that. Simply replace “Sunday” with “Monday”, “Monday” with “Tuesday” and so on. Don’t forget to also update the day names in the small calendars at the top.
After you’ve checked that the updated calendar is correct, it’s time to hide back those rows we made visible in the beginning. To do that, select the rows 3 to 14. Then move your mouse over the row numbers and click on the small arrow that appears. This should reveal a pop-up menu from which you can click on “Hide Selected Rows”.
There you have it: this is how you get the default Numbers calendar template to have the weeks start on Monday.
If you want to save this calendar into a template you can follow the instructions on this page.