Sunday 20 November 2011

My perfect A4/A5 diary layout

When it comes to the larger organisers, the ones that sit on a desk, I tend to prefer page-per-day or even 2-pages-per-day, but none of the layouts available commercially works properly for me. So I made my own:

 
The hardest part was building the Excel file that serves as the data source for the Word mailmerge. Have a look closely at the top of the left hand page: yes, those mini-calendars are dynamic and will always show the current month plus next month. The formulae that feed all those numbers are non-trivial, but in another part of the collection of odd jobs I call a career, I'm an Excel developer, so it was an interesting challenge.

Print this on a duplex laser, punch it and you have an A4 diary. Mine is A5, so I print this in duplex booklet layout and then guillotine the sheets and voila: an A5 diary, the way I want it.

Once I get file hosting sorted out and playing with Blogger, perhaps I could publish the source files, or at least a PDF. Let me know in the comments if you're interested. Also, now the heavy lifting of the Excel file is all done, developing different custom layouts in Word should be pretty easy, so let me know in the comments if there's a layout you've always wanted. No promises, but I might be able to produce something that works for you.

8 comments:

Steve Morton said...

Ray
I'm happy to host the files for you on the Philofaxy server, just post them to me and I will create an area for your files.
Alternatively use Google Docs, although linking can be a bit of a fiddle!
Regards
Steve

Ray Blake said...

Cool. Thanks, Steve.

LJ said...

I'm loving this layout, looks really nice. Wishing I had more appointments in my days so I could use it :-)

MsPencil said...

This is lovely. I believe my DH would prefer this over his Franklin Covey inserts.

Unknown said...

As a fellow IT geek and Filofax owner, i am v impressed.

Vijay said...

Apologies if I am intrusive, but what guillotine do you use? Could you offer any advice on that please ?

Ray Blake said...

I couldn't tell you what brand the guillotine is (and I'm away from home so I can't check) but there's nothing special about it. I bought it in Staples.

Vijay said...

thanks Ray... I will have a quick look into them too.. I am just dipping into filofax life and finding it really addictive! Never thought I would have this much fun organising my 'not so much organisation needed' life.. Thanks again..

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