How to Use Calendar Templates in Google Docs

Quickly create any calendar you need

By
Tim Fisher
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Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University
Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.
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Updated on February 3, 2021
Reviewed by
Ryan Perian
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Reviewed by Ryan Perian
  • Western Governors University
Ryan Perian is a certified IT specialist who holds numerous IT certifications and has 12+ years' experience working in the IT industry support and management positions.
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What To Know

  • Docs doesn't come with calendar templates, but other sites do, like CalendarLabs and Template.net.
  • On Template.net, choose a template, pick Google Docs as the format, and then select Free Download.
  • Log in to your Google account, choose Make a copy, and then make any edits you want to with Google Docs.

This article explains how to download and edit calendar templates in Google Docs. The steps below are for the desktop version of Google Docs. However, once the template is imported into a document, you can view and edit it in the mobile app.

Find a Google Docs Calendar Template

Creating a calendar in Google Docs is tedious if you plan to start from scratch. A much better alternative is to import a premade calendar template directly into the document.

The first step is to locate one you like. Google doesn't provide any for Docs (they do for Google Sheets), but many other sites do. We'll use Template.net.

  1. Open Template.net and find the template you want to use.

    If you're using a different site, such as CalendarLabs, you might have to search specifically for Google Docs templates.

    Google Docs accepts Microsoft Word documents, too. So if there are DOC or DOCX files with calendars in them, you can download those and then open them in Docs to use them.

  2. Select the format menu off to the right, and pick Google Docs, followed by Free Download.

    Template.net google docs calendar template

  3. Follow the on-screen steps to log in to your Google account. When asked, select Make a copy.

  4. You'll immediately be taken to the calendar in a new document.

Edit the Docs Calendar Template

Making changes to a calendar in Google Docs works the same way you’d change anything. But it’s important to remember that you’re working within a table, so it’s not as fluid as regular document text.

To add text, click inside one of the days and start typing. You can also insert pictures, edit each day's number, adjust the table borders, add additional rows and columns, merge columns to create a section for notes, change text size and color, etc.

formatting options in a Google Docs calendar template

See How to Make a Table in Google Docs if you'd rather build the calendar from scratch. Also in that article is more information on editing tables if you want to customize a calendar template.

Consider Google Sheets Calendars

Google Docs is excellent for document-style editing. That's its purpose, and that's what it excels at. But for structured data like a calendar, you might prefer Google Sheets. There are calendar templates built-in to it that are easy to grab, and depending on how you plan to use the calendar, Sheets might even be a better choice.

Does your calendar need a space to write something? As you saw above with Docs, creating events is extremely easy because you're actually editing a table cell. But if you need to highlight particular days out of the month or print something off, you can glance at it to know what day of the week it is; the calendar templates in Sheets are enough.

There are a few options. Find them by opening Sheets and selecting Template gallery at the top.

Screenshot of Google Sheets calendar templates
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