Comments on: 7 Minute Screencast: Color code a SharePoint Calendar – Update

By: Jim Bob Howard

Jim Bob Howard — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:16:17 +0000

Good job, Yong Hui! That was fast! I was just emailing you to ask you to send your calculated columns.

Glad you got it working!

By: Hi Jim

Hi Jim — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:14:15 +0000

Please disregard my prior posting. I had it working!! It is exciting I have endless choices to color my calendar. Jim, you are great, so very helpful.

Yonghui

By: Hi Jim

Hi Jim — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:03:09 +0000

Hi Jim,

Thank you for taking the time to help out, sorry for my delay.

I created another calendar to try out your method. The new fields finally all passed the syntax. It turned out SharePoint does not take color names, only hex numbers are acceptable. Nor does it like color1! etc. So I used your second option. What I got eventually is #Value displayed throughout my calendar, with no colors. I believe I am very close, just couldn’t figure out where I had it wrong. I have:

Label (for drop down choices)
Color1 (the rest are calculated)
Color2
ColorChoice
FinalColor
Display
BGColor1
BGColor2
FinalBGColor

Jim, I know you are very busy. If you think you can still help, I can email you the formular scripts. Thanks a bunch anyway!

By: Cherry

Cherry — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:26:14 +0000

Hi Jim Bob

Your site has been very helpful with the calendar function. I’ve been using if for time off request.
I currently have different color for each department and using workflow.

I was wondering if you can help me figure out how to make the calendar color red when someone takes the same time off. Bascially I want to quickly be able to see if there’s a risk if someone is out the same day or around the same time.

By: Jim Bob Howard

Jim Bob Howard — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:02:23 +0000

Yong Hui,

What may work for you is to combine a couple of display fields. (Oh, and the reason for the Display field is to build the HTML needed to show the colors. You can include the Title in that calculated field if you choose.)

Nested IF Statements
To combine fields, you may have to create multiple “Color” fields:

Color1 : =IF(Type=A,red,IF(Type=B,blue, … IF(Type=H,green,”"))))))))

Color2 : =IF(Type=I,yellow,IF(Type=J,orange, … IF(Type=P,purple,”"))))))))

…

If you do it this way, you could conceivably include 65 colors (8 x 8 + 1 default), by creating a FinalColor…

FinalColor : =IF(Color1!=”",Color1,IF(Color2!=”",Color2, … IF(Color8!=”",Color8,DefaultColor))))))))

CHOICE Statement
Another option would be to assign a number to each Training Type in the same way.

Color1 : =IF(Type=A,1,IF(Type=B,2, … IF(Type=H,8,0))))))))

Color2 : =IF(Type=I,9,IF(Type=J,10, … IF(Type=P,16,0))))))))

…

ColorChoice : =Color1+Color2+Color3+…+ColorN

Then you could use a CHOICE statement like this:

FinalColor : =IF(ColorChoice=0,DefaultColor,CHOICE(ColorChoice,red,blue,yellow,green,orange,purple,chartreuse, … fuschia))

Let me know if that helps.

Blessings,
Jim Bob

By: Hi Jim

Hi Jim — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:25:19 +0000

Jim, here I am again. Sorry for the first question, I should have read the thread before I post. So you are aware of it and had a solution already. It can’t work for me though, as I do not have SharePoint Designer. So I am stuck with 7-number limit or 8-number limit?

By: Hi Jim

Hi Jim — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:57:50 +0000

I applied this method to our existing training calendar. It worked, but in a limited way. It allows only 8 DataType (9 is reserved for “everything else”). Are you aware of that? We certainly have more than 8 types of training. What’s your suggestion for a solution? Secondary, this color coded calendar shows only the “Display” calculated field, instead of “Title”, any event the user does not select from the predefined DataType (TrainingLabel in our case)list will be blank, that’s not good, we want some text there. Besides, one Traininglabel could have more than one variation to describe the location and/or group #, “Display” field won’t reflect that detail. What part of script should I change to have the color coded calandar display the Title field rather than the Display field?

Thanks!

By: Mas

Mas — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:11:08 +0000

I tried to use standard list calendar as well as Event calendar and for some month even items are not more than 100.

Thanks for help.
Masood

By: Jim Bob Howard

Jim Bob Howard — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:19:35 +0000

Mas,

I haven’t seen that problem. Perhaps Christophe could answer that. How many items do you have per day on those with the “more items” link?

Blessings,
Jim Bob

By: Mas

Mas — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:43:36 +0000

Hi Jim,
I successfully created the color coded calendar, but for given days I am getting “more items”, when I expanded monthly calendar, calendar did not display those items and still saying that “more item” for that given day, what could be reason.
Could you please help.

Thanks
Mas