Tag: planning

Compact Calendar for 2017 specifically for Malaysia (Selangor)

Dave Seah is the inventor of Compact Calendar that I have adopted for many years now.

I first introduced its use in 2008 when I was the Deputy Principal & Academic Director of Technology Park Malaysia College. This practice was extended when I took up the job of CEO & Principal of Han Chiang College in 2015.

Nothing beats the compact calendar when you need to plan events for the year and stay clear of “pit holes” like the eve of public holidays (have your event just before or after a religious event in Malaysia can bring on many complications and unforeseen political baggage!).  All Han Chiang College’s academic calendars (for different programmes) are now done using Dave’s compact calendar that I have introduced which are adapted to Peang State (to accommodate the differing state holidays in Malaysia).

I am enclosing links to the compact calendar that I have adapted for Selangor state where I will return to reside upon the completion of my stint in Penang. Two files are available, one is in PDF format and the other an Excel file (customizable by my readers, just change the holiday lookup table to your particular state). I have included the school holidays taking data from a holiday website and confirmed the data with the Ministry of Education Malaysia’s site. Of course, the school holidays are meant for Selangor state (where Perlis, Perak, Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, Pahang, Sabah, Sarawak and the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya & Labuan are in the same group which observes Sat & Sun as the weekend).

To download the editable Excel file, please click this link. For the Compact Calendar 2017 customized for Selangor State in PDF format, please click here.

A word of caution for those wanting to customize this compact calendar. You will need to use Excel. Open Office / LibreOffice will somehow mess up the formatting a little. Google Sheets is a big “NO NO” as the formulae and formatting both have issues and affect the compact calendar. Please do not forget to read the instructions before you do any customization.

Enjoy your annual planning and say thanks to Dave Seah for his invention.

Compact Calendar for 2015 specifically for Malaysia

Get a full-year view from this compact calendar to help you plan events without worry of clashing with public or school holidays!

I have adopted David Seah’s creation, a one-page-view-all compact calendar since 2008. Every year, when the public and school holidays for the following year are announced, I will try to spend some time to update David Seah’s spreadsheet and come up with my own version, incorporating Malaysian school holidays as well as public holidays (National & Selangor, where I live).

This planning aid has been great for me whenever I needed to plan work. When I was the deputy principal of a private college, this compact calendar came handy for me to plan out the academic schedules etc. The week number on the first column and the public and school holidays (and we have lots of both in Malaysia) let you look at one view the issues etc. that will cloud anyone planning events, both private and officials.

For the benefit of my readers, I have done up two file format of the Compact Calender for 2015, a PDF version for those who live in Malaysia (especially Selangor state) where you can use the calendar as it is. The other version is .xlsx (Excel) which allows users to edit the file as they want. If you live in another state in Malaysia or if you want to create your own version (if you live in another country), the Excel version is there for you. Be prepare to fiddle with the sheets a little and read the instructions on the 1st sheet before doing any changes. Basically, if you are say, living in Singapore, you just have to edit the “Holiday Look Up Table”, the last sheet, making sure that the dates you put in are in fact 2015! The formulae/macro from David Seah will take care of updating the calendar automatically. You then just have to remove the highlight (in grey to facilitate printing on black and white printers) I made on Malaysian school holidays and cover the dates relevant to Singapore.

Don’t try to re-size the sheets, these have been optimized by Seah to print on one page. If you have a colour printer, it will be best. For wall-mounted version it will be best if you can print the compact calendar out on A3 paper and in colour. I find it just as good (for I have only a cheap b & w laser printer) to use a highlighter pen to go over the holidays which were shaded a bit too light when printed on b & w printer.

These files were in fact edited and created using LibreOffice, but it created issues when the file was saved in Excel file format. Hence you do need Microsoft Excel to open and edit the .xlsx version. I had tried uploading the file Google Docs, it also had some formula issues. It looks like we cannot do away with Microsoft Excel as yet!. However, my LibreOffice file format version works just fine if opened in LibreOffice!

I hope this Compact Calendar will take some pains out of your planning tasks! Please let me know if this compact calendar  proofs to be useful to you.

Please click this link to download Compact Calender 2015 for Malaysia – PDF version.

For the more adventurous, here is the Compact Calendar 2015 for Malaysia – Excel version.

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