Most content calendars are spreadsheets before they are anything else. That is the right tool for planning — you see the month at once and move things by dragging. The wrong part is what comes after: copying every row into a scheduler by hand.
The columns
- date — the day, as 2026-10-01
- time — the minute, as 19:00, in your workspace's time zone
- caption — the text; in quotes if it has commas
- hashtags — optional, separated by spaces or commas
- accounts — an @handle, a network name like instagram, or a display name; several, comma-separated
- media_url — optional, a full link to the image or video
- media_type — optional: image, video, reel, carousel, story, text
What the check catches
Every row is judged before anything is scheduled: a date that does not exist, a minute that has passed, an account that is not connected, a video row without a link. A sheet with one bad line schedules nothing — that is on purpose, because half a month is worse than none.
Two habits that make it painless
- 1Keep a template sheet with the header row and one example line; duplicate it each month.
- 2Put the media links in first, from wherever the files live, and only then write captions — the row that is missing a link is easy to see.
Excel in most of Europe exports with semicolons rather than commas. Both are read; you do not need to change the export.