How to Use the Calendar Template in 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 a calendar template. Google doesn't provide any for Docs (they do for Google Sheets), but many other sites do. We'll use CalendarLabs.com.

1. Search the Calendar labs site for docs calendar to find updated templates, or go directly to the current year's template. Another good option is Template.net because you get several months at once.

   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 Download on the template you want to use. 

3. On the next page, click Make a copy to copy the file into your Google Drive account. If you’re asked to sign in, do that now.

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.

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.