Personalize a Word Calendar with Photos, Clipart, and Color

Once you have a basic Word calendar created using a calendar template or the calendar wizard, you can turn it into a personalized photo calendar.

This tutorial covers the following activities:

• changing font colors
• changing border colors
• adding shading
• inserting photos and clipart

If you missed the first part of this tutorial Creating a Basic Calendar, click the link to go there now.

How to personalize a Word calendar

Black and white is boring so we will change the colors and add photos to brighten up and personalize your calendar.

Open your saved document in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and let’s get started.

Changing font colors

You can quickly change the color of the month headings, weekday names, and dates in the entire document using the Style Pane:

1. On the Home tab, find the Styles group, then click the dialog launcher . The Styles pane opens.
2. Hover over Month Names, then click the down arrow.
   Click Modify. The Modify Style dialog opens.
   
3. Click the down arrow next to the font color to open the color picker.
   
   In the example, I selected the darkest olive green. Individual colors in your color pallet may be different depending on which theme is applied to your document.
4. While the Modify Style dialog is open, make any other font changes you desire, such as bold, italic, underline, font family, or size. When finished, click OK.
5. Repeat these steps for the Dates and Weekdays font styles.

Now that you have colorful fonts, it’s time to change the border colors and add shading.

Changing border colors

The calendar is created using a table, but we cannot select the whole table to change the border colors because some of the cell borders are hidden. Follow these steps to highlight portions of the table and change the border color:

1. In the left margin, just to the left of the row that displays the weekday names, left-click and hold. The row should now be highlighted.
2. While still holding the left-mouse button, drag the cursor down the left margin so that all of the rows are highlighted.
   
3. Release the left button, then right-click.
4. Select Borders and Shading from the menu.
5. On the Borders tab, select a new color.
6. Under Apply To, select Cell from the drop-down list.
7. Click OK.

Repeat these steps for each month. Be creative! Try using different colors for each month or season.

Adding shading

Follow the same steps for changing border colors to add shading to table rows except in step 5, select the Shading tab, then choose a fill color.

Note: Wait to add shading until last if you want to insert a photo or clipart into the table cell.

To add shading to a single table cell, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the cell, select Borders and Shading.
2. On the Shading tab, select a fill color.
3. Under Apply To, select Cell.
4. Click OK.

Now for the fun part…adding photos and clipart to your Microsoft Word calendar!

Inserting photos

Now that you have a colorful Microsoft Word calendar, you can add photos or clipart.

To insert a photo, follow these steps:

1. Double-click where you want to place the image.
   
2. On the Insert tab, click either Picture (to insert your own photo), or Clip Art (to open the Microsoft Clip Art Gallery).
3. The image is inserted. Adjust the size as needed.

To move the image, you may need to change the text wrapping settings:

1. Right-click the image.
2. Select Text Wrapping and choose an option.

I found that the In Front of Text option was the easiest to work with. I also found the text wrapping to be bit quirky with shaded cells, so add shading last.

You can add shadows, frames, and more to your images by using the preset options on the Picture Tools Format tab that appears when the image is selected. For in-depth instructions on formatting tables and images in Word 2007, pick up a copy of Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Press Ctrl+S to save your calendar. It is now ready to print!

Here is the sample I created while writing this tutorial. The thumbnail looks distorted, but you can download the file.

Have fun with your Word calendar!