Free Calendars to Organize Your Life
As I write this, temperatures on a national weather map show that Fall is really here and not just a calendar notation. My wife especially enjoys the fall because it brings cooler weather and leads to her favorite time of year, the holiday season. And I'm again astonished that I already need another year's calendar planner. But, instead of running out to buy a planner that I can't use until next year, I've learned that I can create an amazing assortment of calendars online or via wizards in software I already own.
You can print simple, straight-forward but customized calendars from TimeAndDate.com, selecting to display from one to several months, or up to an entire year. You can also select the font size, which day starts the week, day and week numbersthroughout the year, moon phases, and different sets of holidays. And, you can use this site to view past calendars (on which day of the week were you born?) or calculate the duration between two dates (how many days has it been since you were born?).
Calendars Net is "a free interactive web calendar hosting service, where you and anyone you choose can post events visible and printable by whomever you choose, or everyone." Creating a calendar is simple, and, once created, the Calendar Administration offers more than a dozen customization categories, including Display Options, Event Categories, and Security. While default settings produce an appealing format, extensive options accommodate all tastes and needs. After creation, your calendar is available at the Web address "my.calendars.net/<calendarname>.” You can improve the calendar's appearance for printing by clicking Administer This Calendar and Display Options, then un-checking the display bars. If you inadvertently remove the Administer link, use "my.calendars.net/<calendarname>/admin” to reach the options screen.
AOL and Yahoo! provide powerful free online calendars offering multiple views, easy printing, and flexible data sharing with others. Both sites require registration, although if you already have an AOL account or a Yahoo! email address you're already registered at the respective sites.
With some later versions of Microsoft Word (e.g., 2002), a calendar wizard is available that produces basic monthly calendars. To use the wizard, click File, New, General Templates, Other Documents, then Calendar Wizard. The format is boring but it does allow you to import pictures.
The handy reference site About.com provides a wealth of free calendar templates to print or download for use with various software packages. The link for the Education World Calendar Templates provides teacher resources such as templates for calendars, award certificates, name tags, and other materials one may need in the classroom. One of the nicest links, Free Printable Calendar Templates, allows you to create and download customized calendars as formated as Word documents. You can even subscribe to receive updated calendars by e-mail. And last but hardly least, the link for the Microsoft Office Templates provides more than 30 calendar formats (after you click on this link, scroll down to the section titled "Browse Templates" and click on the Calendars link under "Calendars, Labels, Planners, and Stationery").
Finally, be sure to visit IDEAL Computer Services for a dynamite shareware calendar that is free to download and try and only $20 if you decide to continue using it. This program runs on your PC rather than on a Web site, so you can use it when you're offline or traveling. It has many user-friendly features such as printing exactly what's displayed (data and format), easily creating multiple calendars, allowing recurring events, and sharing public or private events. You can even backup and restore this calendar. You can customize details such as font, first day of the week, and displaying a dialog box and playing a tone when an occasion occurs, to name a few. This program's open design has enabled programmers to create plug-ins that add features such as can adding events to multiple days, automatically checking for new calendar software, and sharing calendar data with Palm pocket devices.
These calendar resources provide something for everyone — online or downloadable software, straight-forward formats or ones you can customize. Whichever one(s) you may choose, you will have powerful, free tools for getting organized.
AARP does not recommend or endorse any of these products or web sites. Please be advised that there are other similar products and web sites available which were not reviewed and are not listed here.
