Modern SharePoint Color-Coded Calendar
Microsoft Lists are SharePoint Lists, and these lists can be displayed as calendars. Conditional formatting can now be done on calendar views! This means that you can color code your calendars, based on values in the columns, such as an event category.
Old Way: Overlays
This concept of color coding has existed in the past, for classic calendars in SharePoint, and it was called a calendar overlay. Now, it is accomplished in a completely different way, by using view formatting on a calendar view. Using the old classic views in SharePoint is not encouraged anymore.
Example: Vacation Request Calendar
In this example, I have a vacation request list, and would like to display the list as a vacation calendar, and color code the items according to what type of leave request it is. This is what my leave request form looks like. I would like to have a calendar where each leave type is displayed as a different color.
Here are the steps
Follow these steps to create a color coded a calendar view:
- Create a calendar view by clicking the View drop-down at the top right of your list. Click Create new View.
- Notice that you can configure which column is displayed as the name of the event in the calendar, either when you create the view, under More options, or you can click the View drop-down, and choose Edit Current View. The column I’m displaying in my calendar is the reason.
- Which column in your list would you like to use as the value for color coding? In my example, I have a Leave Type column, and I would like different types of leave to show as different colors. Click the settings gear at the top right of your screen, and choose List Settings.
- Scroll to the bottom, and under the Views section, click the name of the calendar view that you just created.
- Check the box next to the name of the column that you would like to use for color coding. Mine is Leave Type. Click OK to save the change.
- Back on your calendar view, click the View drop-down, and choose Format Current View.
- In the Conditional formatting section, click Manage rules.
- There will be an existing conditional formatting rule listed there, which colors all text as gray. This can be deleted. Click the ellipsis on the right side of it, and click Delete rule.
- Click Add rule.
- Choose the name of your column that you added at step 5 above. Mine is leave type. Then fill in the rest of the logic for the condition you’d like to create. My first rule will be that if the leave type is vacation, I’ll show the items as blue:
- You can click the little back arrow next to Create rule, and you’ll be looking at the list of rules, and this is where you can add more rules with the Add rule button. I’ll create a rule for each leave type:
- Be sure to click SAVE at the bottom when finished creating rules.
Here is my completed, color-coded calendar leave request / vacation calendar view:
Why aren’t all list columns available in the “Choose a column” dropdown under “create rule”? I only see Title and the Start and End Date columns? I would assume most users would want to display the name of a person on the calendar, but color code the entry by a leave type column.
That’s a great question, I’m not sure why Microsoft didn’t think of that. In the meantime, until they do, use my workaround in this post.
What about event tiles? My environment the calendar is still in classic mode but it creates event tiles for the actual web part. I would like to color code the event tiles to match the calendar. Is that possible?
No
Does this still work? I have attempted in 2 different tenants and color coding appears broken.
Is there a way to change the calendar view to a weekly view? The monthly view for me only shows one item plus the “+x items” icon which I find not as helpful as I would a weekly view of the calendar.
It’s on Microsoft’s roadmap. Hasn’t been rolled out yet.
Hi.. I’m utilizing the calendar view for a custom SharePoint list for Conference Room Reservations needing approval. We have 4 rooms, and a user could potentially book all 4 on one item (they are checkboxes on the form). Classic allowed us to create 4 overlays, one for each room, and then show them all together on 1 view, which sufficed for showing how many of the rooms were booked by one user that day.
Is there a workaround in the modern view for this capability? (it seems to only show the formatted color for the first room, so it doesn’t account for the others in the item).
Maybe if there was a way to use “contains” instead of “equals” for the room name, that could work. See if that’s an option in the interface.
No recurrence available this way, right?
I don’t think so.
I was able to see my drop down category for the event when I stopped using the Title default column in the list.
However, when I format the calendar view it only gives me the option to color code the event, I cannot add an icon or change the font to bold, etc.
That’s correct. Calendar conditional formatting only allows for the background color, not fonts or icons.