22 January 2017

Sunday Start Diary Inserts

I infrequently get requested for diary inserts with the start of the week on a Sunday rather than Monday. We also get some really odd requests for 5 day week (no weekend) or Thursday start inserts etc.

So we do not offer a customised service for one off inserts, and if you look at the list of inserts we already provide a large number of different inserts already and we are not going to start offering them with Sunday start as well as Monday start.

Hopefully with the help of this post you will be able to adapt our source files to create your own Sunday start files should you wish to have that feature.

The change over is relatively easy to do. But you need to follow the steps to achieve the end result shown here:


So we will be using this example. Firstly you need to download the two source files (Word and Excel)  the Word base file and the Excel data file you will need both.

First step is to open the Excel file.

You will see something like this:


We need to change the first row to look like this:


Things to note:
  1. The column headings are the same, they have just been reordered to move Sunday to the start of the week. No other row is changed. 
  2. The date for the Sunday in Cell A2 is obviously changed compared to the original. 
So having made those small changes save the file to the same folder as you have the Word file in. 

The next step is to open the Word file you downloaded. It will look something like this:


If you go in to the Mail Merge Manager (the location of this will vary depending on which version of Word/Office you are using)

If you toggle the 'Preview Results' the page should change to something like this: 


The merge labels are fairly clear as to which ones they are. We need to shuffle things around a bit to get things to a Sunday start, to something like this: 


Now if you toggle the preview button again you will see things are in the correct order but Sunday and Wednesday will not look quite right, this is because they have moved from one side to the other. And if you look at the earlier images you will see that on the left hand page it is date then day, and on the right hand page it is day then date. 

But there is an easy fix. Toggle the Preview Results again until you can see the Merge Fields again. 

Right click on <<datesu>> and click 'Toggle Field Codes'  Then change it to 
{MERGEFIELD DateSu \@ "d DDDD"\*lower } 
Basically you are just repositioning the lower case d to move the date to the beginning. And do a similar change to <<datewe>> and move the d to the other side of the DDDD part of the field code. 

Then do 'Update Field Code' then click on Preview Results and everything should look as you need it to be. 

Also note that the header fields are changed to <<datesu>> inplace of <<datemo>> and on the other page to <<datewe>> instead of <<dateth>> This just ensures the correct month is shown in the header. 

Then do 'Update Field Code' then click on Preview Results and everything should look as you need it to be.

If everything looks as it should, it is now time to do the mail merge as usual to create your new file.

Insert the blank page at the start of the new file and remove the section breaks (^B) and you have your file ready for printing. 

If all of the above was a little bit too much for you here are a set of files to help you get started:

The source files Word and Excel.

And I've also done some 2017 files as well in Word and PDF ready to be downloaded and printed in the usual way.

Oh and then I broke all the rules, so here is not only Sunday start... but Letter size or Half Letter size when booklet printed!

I've not been able to 'test' this variant because here in the modern world we only have ISO size paper!

However, if you want to play with the Letter size variant you will need to use:

The source Letter files Word and Excel.

And I've also done some Letter 2017 files as well in Word and PDF ready to be downloaded and printed in the usual way.

Converting other files to Sunday start is similar.

Enjoy.










27 comments:

  1. So why do pages start on Mondays when Sunday is the first day of the week? That's never made sense to me.

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    1. The international standard (ISO 8601) maintains that the week starts on Monday. That is the European convention and you'll find most European diaries follow it. It is also suggested by use of the word 'weekend' to describe Saturday and Sunday.

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    2. It's only in the last 50 years (certainly in Europe) that Saturday has ceased to be a weekday (which comes from "workday") and regarded as part of the weekend. As recently as the 60s and early 70s many people in offices worked on Saturdays until at least lunchtime. Bus and rail timetables were split into Weekdays (Monday to Saturday) and Sundays. The reduction in working hours (generally 48 to 44 and then 40 per week) is what caused Saturday to cease to be a working day for most.

      Strictly speaking, the 7th day/ Sabbath/ day of rest is Saturday and that is still kept in some cultures. So yes, Sunday is the first day of the new week. However, it's only really in North America does this seem to still persist in diaries and organisers.

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  2. Great work, Steve. I shall be sending a few enquirers to this post.

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  3. Interestingly, the planner app on Samsung phones starts the week with Sunday.

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    1. Most of them you can choose what the start date is. Monday is the ISO standard though.

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  4. Sunday serves as a chill-out after the work week. So for me Sunday is the 7th and therefore last day of the week. Doesn't the bible quote "work six days but on the seventh rest and celebrate the lord"? Following this results in Monday being the first day of the week.
    For me calling Sunday the first week day is not logic and my brain would not work with it.

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    1. Maybe: praise the Lord is more appropriate? As a German I am not that familiar with the English version of the bible. Plus I am not a member of any religion, just living in a culture that was created by the values of Christianity.

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    2. From my distant memory of what it says in the big book your description is spot on!

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    3. Yes - the 7th day is the Sabbath and the day of rest - but that should be Saturday - not Sunday. It's only modern Christianity that moved it to Sunday to be the day to rest after the 6 day working week (Monday to Saturday).

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    4. Ah, that's interesting Tim. Thanks for highlighting this as it's always beneficial to learn from history. Do you also know when this was changed?

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    5. Thank you Steve for your kind feedback. It helps me to keep things correctly in my memory:-)

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    6. It gradually switched over the decades but became the International Standard ISO 8601 in 1988. Like International paper sizes, just about every major country has adopted it - except one!

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    7. In the US there is a church of Seventh Day Adventists who interpret the Bible to read as Tim pointed out. They are nation wide, but one of the biggest communities is in Loma Linda, Ca.. they have gained a high recognition for their longevity, and are one of the world's "Blue Zones".

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    8. The adventists consider Saturday the Sabbath, so for them, Sunday is the first day of the week.

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    9. Hi Tim, thanks again for your smart input. 1988 that's when I have been in 8th grade at school. And as long as I live I can only remember Sunday as being the one day off work/school etc here in Germany.

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    10. When the early Christians were establishing their faith as distinct from (rather than just another sect of) Judaism, by using a Monday as the Lord's Day (NOT Sabbath - which in their culture remained a Saturday), it made the important Theological distinction that in Christianity, a faith of grace, the time of rest did not need to be earned at the end of the week but was freely given at the beginning of the week. It also reflects the Day of Resurrection, which occurred on a Sunday (hence Lord's Day).

      Having said all that, Sunday IS part of the weekend: Sunday at the front end and Saturday at the far end each bracket the week, and are therefore Weekends.

      John

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  5. A Sunday start seems very odd to me... the weekend would be split over two different pages. I would far rather see my working week and then the weekend that I'm looking forward to after it, all in one view. I suppose it's what you're used to though. I've decided not to buy any number of planners/inserts entirely because they started the week with a Sunday!

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    1. And my month to view follow the same pattern - Monday start; weekend days together on the right.
      What really confuses me is when people have different layouts for monthly and weekly inserts - the monthly pages starting on one day and the weekly on a different... does not compute!

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    2. I'm guilty of that one. I grew up in the US, where our monthly calendars always start on a Sunday. So I've had 50 years of glancing at a calendar and knowing immediately whether it's Wednesday, Thursday, Etc. I tried using a Monday start and couldn't figure out what day of the week I was on at any point. I missed a couple of meetings before I went back to the old way that I grew up with. So this year, I'm using a pocket Windsor with a monthly calendar starting on Sunday like I'm used to, and weekly starting on Monday, because there's no question that keeping both of your weekend days together is the best way to do it.

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  6. Here in the US, once I entered the working world and found my first-ever Monday-start calendar, I was thrilled. Monday-start is the only format I can stand to look at, for all of the reasons you all mentioned above. The weekend is the end of my week, and it looks/works best for both weekend days to be displayed together, with a full-view clean start again on a Monday.

    Further to what Amanda says about the confusing "mixed inserts," another inconsistent thing is how some suppliers print the tiny micro month calendar (such as at top of page) with a Sunday start, even when it's printed on a Monday-start monthly page.

    So happy to see sound and solid support for the Monday start! :)

    Heather

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  7. Personally, I like to think of Sunday as part of the weekend, with Monday starting the new week because it's a work day. I'm in no rush to begin another week of work. :)

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  8. What brick and mortar store of the U.S. sells a monthly calendar which begins on Monday? On all of those calendars I bought Sunday is the first day of the week.

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  9. Well done to you Steve! I don't use the diary print outs, only the year fold out, but I do appreciate the involved and hard work you do, whether I make use of them or not!

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  10. A company I worked for Saturday was the first day in the working week. and all end of week figures were reported before going home on Friday. (May the Goddess bless all retail workers who work both Saturday and Sunday hours)
    I like a Sunday start on my meal planning inserts as I grocery shop on a Sunday Morning and plan to use fresh fruit and veg at the start of the week and move to frozen towards the end

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