How to hyperlink a digital planner made in Canva

Design templates, not 365 copies

Canva is a good place to design a planner and a poor place to click the same tab four hundred times. Build one artboard for each layout you actually designed: a cover, a year overview, one month page, one week page, one day page, and a notes page. Leave the date areas blank, or put them in a spot you are happy to cover with stamped text.

Do not duplicate January through December inside Canva and then try to link them by hand. Folory copies the month template once per month, the week template once per week, and the day template once per date. The artwork stays yours. The repetition is the part the browser does.

Export a standard PDF

In Canva, use Share, then Download, then PDF Standard. PDF Print is fine when you need crop marks for paper, but for a tablet planner Standard is the usual choice. Do not lock the file with a password. Folory reads the PDF locally and cannot open an encrypted file.

If a page looks like a single flat picture after export, the links will still work, but the file will be heavier. Prefer elements that stay as vectors and text. Very large image-heavy files are limited by the memory of the computer you are using, because nothing is uploaded to a server to be resized for you.

Tag the pages and set the year

Upload the PDF in the Folory studio. Tag each page as cover, index, year, month, week, day, or notes. Only the first page of each repeating role is copied. If you uploaded two different month designs, Folory uses the first one and tells you so.

Pick the year and whether weeks start on Monday or Sunday. The weekday names printed in your Canva file do not change when you flip that setting. If your month page says Mon Tue Wed across the top, leave the week start on Monday or the numbered cells will sit under the wrong labels.

A single month is a good first export. The free plan covers a one-month planner, up to 48 pages, with a small “Made with Folory” line. Pro removes the cap and the watermark so you can export the year you will actually list.

Draw each hotspot once

Open the month template and drag one rectangle over the whole calendar grid. Set it to Calendar grid, 7 columns by 6 rows. Folory splits that rectangle into cells, skips the blank days before the 1st, and points each in-month day at the matching day page. Turn on “Write the dates into the boxes” only when those boxes are empty. If you already drew the numbers in Canva, leave stamping off or you will get two numbers.

Draw the tab rectangles the same way: Home, Year, Notes, Previous month, Next month. Do the same on the week template with a 7-column row, and on the day template with previous day, next day, month, and week. The year page gets one rectangle set to Month buttons, 3 by 4, filled left to right from January.

Those rectangles are stored on the template. Every copied page reuses them, and the target changes with the date. March’s “next month” goes to April. March 2’s “previous day” goes to March 1. January’s previous month is left unlinked rather than wrapping to December.

Stamp the headers, then test the file

On the Dates step, add a text box on the month template with the template {MMMM} {yyyy}. On the day template use {EEEE} and {MMMM} {d}, {yyyy}. On the week template, Week of {MMM} {d} is enough. Helvetica, Times, and Courier are built in. You can also upload one TTF or OTF if the header has to match the Canva file. Folory draws that text on top of your art. It does not erase letters that are already in the design.

Export and use the click-through list before you download. Then run the free link checker. Open the PDF in GoodNotes, Notability, or Xodo and tap a day, a tab, and a previous/next control. Listing a planner with a dead January tab is the expensive version of this test.