Including a calendar in your PowerPoint presentation can be a useful way to share key dates, milestones, or events with your audience. PowerPoint makes it easy to insert and customize calendars directly within your slides.

Here is a step-by-step guide to inserting a calendar in PowerPoint using both templates and manual methods.

Benefits of Adding a Calendar

Before diving into the how-to, let’s first go over some of the benefits of including a calendar in your PowerPoint slides:

Highlight important dates. Use the calendar to call attention to major deadlines, launches, meetings, conferences or other notable events.
Provide temporal context. Give your audience a sense of timeframe related to your presentation topic.
Organize schedules or timelines. Use the calendar format to map out project plans, product roadmaps or other sequences.

Visually engage your audience. Calendars break up text-heavy slides and add useful, practical information.
Promote planning and preparation. Give your viewers advance notice to schedule calendar items you share.

Method 1: Use a PowerPoint Calendar Template

The fastest way to insert a calendar is by using one of PowerPoint’s pre-made calendar templates. Here’s how:

Open your PowerPoint presentation and select the slide where you want to add the calendar.
Click the File tab and choose New.
In the Search box, type “calendar” and press Enter.

Browse the available templates and pick one you like.
Click the Create button to open a new presentation with the calendar slides.
In the new presentation, select the month you want and copy the slide.

Switch back to your original PowerPoint presentation.
Paste the calendar slide where you want it to appear.

From there, customize calendar details as needed directly within the slide.

Method 2: Manually Create a Calendar

For more control over the calendar design, you can create your own manually:

Insert a table with 6 columns and 7 rows to form the grid.
Merge the cells in the top row to create space for the month name.

Type the month and year at the top and center align the text.
Add numbers down the left column for the dates.
Format the table using colors, borders and styles to create calendar aesthetics.

Type events within the date cells or use icons to represent milestones.

Manually building the calendar takes more work but allows full creative freedom.

Tips for Formatting and Customizing

Once your calendar is inserted or created, use these tips to polish and customize:

Change font styles and colors to match branding
Resize table rows and columns to fit space
Hide gridlines and borders for a clean look

Shade weekends or dates differently
Add graphics or icons to highlight events
Animate calendar elements to make them appear sequentially

Link dates to other slides that show event details

Get creative with different layouts and visual styles!

Best Practices for Presentation Calendars

When including a calendar in your PowerPoint slides, keep these guidelines in mind:

Focus on key dates rather than showing a full year
Keep the design simple and easy to interpret
Use a calendar alongside other visual timeline elements

Update calendars to reflect the current or future year
Hyperlink dates to relevant agenda or detail slides
Leave empty space to write in calendar items during presentations

Other Options for Displaying Calendars

Beyond adding calendars directly in PowerPoint slides, you also have these options:

Embed a live online calendar from tools like Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar that update in real-time
Export your PowerPoint calendar to PDF format for printing handouts

Copy slides to other Office apps like Word to create calendars in different formats

The ability to integrate calendars directly gives your PowerPoint presentations an engaging way to communicate key dates, plans, and events to your audience. With many possible customization and formatting options, you can tailor calendar slides to perfectly fit your presentation content goals.