These instructions work with LibreOffice Calc (free and open source). Hopefully they will also work with Excel, Google Docs etc.

* Select 280 columns and format the width to be 0.15”.
* Select 140 rows and format the height to be 0.15”.
* Choose the 281st column, give it an arbitrary large width and format it with a black color.
* Choose the 141st row, give it an arbitrary large height and format it with a black color.
* Duplicate this sheet.

You now have a layout for a fully opened farm as well as a separate sheet to use for templates.

* On the template sheet, you can now create blocks of crop, tree, flower, animal, fish objects.
* To start: Select a block of empty cells the size of some object you want to show in your layout – where each cell is a tile on the farm.
* Format a color background for the block of cells you have selected. (e.g. green for trees, yellow for flowers, blue for fish etc.)
* Create a simple border for this block by copy/pasting text into the edge cells of the block. (I just use an “X” in each edge cell.) The block should now be quite distinct.
* You can also type some sort of identification in any middle cell(s) of the block. (e.g. “6 Animals; 18 tiles wide by 34 tiles deep” or “40 Trees; 120 tiles wide by 34 tiles deep” or “1 Farmhand; 17 tiles wide by 17 tiles deep”.)
* Repeat these steps for creating whatever objects and sizes you want to plan for in your farm.

You can now copy/paste the block “objects” you’ve created on your template sheet onto the actual farm layout sheet.

Some key points to keep in mind:

* Color coding each block and giving them a simple text border makes it easy to see each area/block and thus select it.
* The ability to select a group of cells and then treat it as a single “object” is key to this entire guide. In LibreOffice, when a block of cells is selected, you can hold the mouse button down on the selection and drag that selection anywhere you want on the sheet. Thus you can paste something from the template sheet and drag it around on the farm layout until you have it exactly where you want it.
* DO NOT do any formatting on either of the 2 sheets. (other than the color formatting to create the blocks.) This keeps everything simple – especially when you are doing a lot of copy/paste actions.
* DO NOT delete cells, rows or columns on either of the 2 sheets. Doing so will deform the farm layout. Instead, use the various spreadsheet commands to ‘clear content’ and ‘remove formatting’ if you need to clear any text or color formatting.
* Use these same commands if you wish to edit existing blocks/objects you have placed on either the template sheet or the farm layout sheet.
* Avoid using cut/paste – unless you know what you’re doing.
* Avoid pasting blocks/objects over the top of existing content – unless you know what you’re doing. (This includes letting go of the mouse button while you’re dragging a selection over the top of other content!)

You can also just use the above as a general guide and create your own way of making a farm layout!

Sample blocks: