i am building a calendar template in Word and I want to change the year. How do I do that?

I also used the banner calendar, but noticed that it now generates a whole year and had no option to generate month/year any longer. So, instead, try FILE, NEW, search for online templates, Calendar, then instead choose the option that is called "Calendar" [top of document looks like JANYEAR) and change it to landscape after you generate the year/month that you desire. It only generates one month at a time.

This site offers some good Word calendar templates. I too have been frustrated that MS does not allow a simple option to create a calendar for a future year.

https://www.wincalendar.com/2025-Word-Calendar

See https://gregmaxey.com/word_tip_pages/calendar_maker_addin.html

Templates provided by Microsoft are often there because they look nice, not because they are easy to change or make good use of Word features.

They usually have been prepared by third-party developers/designers who are strong on aesthetics but not that proficient with Word.

(The same is true of report, letter and resume templates.)

There are templates that can be changed and they are addressed in the linked threads.

How do I create a "Word Calendar Template" to show 2025 - see Suzanne Barnhill's Response

That list does include this thread as well.

This is not a simple job. Several years ago I created a template with macros that convert a yearly calendar from one year to the next. You can download that template from https://jay-freedman.info/Calendar_next_year.zip and examine the code. The macro is intended to work with calendars like those in https://jay-freedman.info/2024_Calendars.zip but may work with other layouts.

Word 2003 and earlier came with a "wizard" (actually just a template containing macros) that creates a calendar for any year. It doesn't need an existing calendar to start from. However, it can only create three designs, all of which are rather ugly. Microsoft discontinued all of its wizards as of Office 2007. This one still works in current Word versions, and you can download it from https://jay-freedman.info/Calendar%20wizard.zip if you want to try it.