Creating a Calendar Tool

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 2, 2023)

Lydia asked if there was a way to add a calendar tool to Word, so that she could scroll through a calendar and select a date that she wanted to insert into her document. Unfortunately, there is no such capability in Word; the closest you can come is to add a calendar object to your document. Follow these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007. (The Calendar Control is not available in Word 2007.)

Position the insertion point where you wan the calendar to appear in your document.
Display the New tab of the Object dialog box. (Choose Object from the Insert menu.)
In the list of available objects, choose Calendar Control.
Word inserts a calendar into your document, and the Control Toolbox appears. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Calendar Control.

With the calendar object in place, you can format it as you would any other object: right-click on it and choose Format Control. The various tabs in the resulting dialog box contain different settings that specify how the calendar should appear and behave in the document.

When your calendar appears as you want it to, click the Exit Design Mode tool on the Control Toolbox. (The tool is the one in the upper-left corner of the toolbox.) The calendar is now "active," and you can select any date in it that you wish. The control is actually part of the document, much as an inserted picture would be part of the document. You cannot use the calendar control to insert dates (without doing some macro programming), but you can use it to provide a reference for any date between 1900 and 2100.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3919) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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