My experience with Numbers is that it starts to choke when you feed it too many columns with 32,000+ entries in them. Excel keeps chugging away even when you've got a lot of data to deal with.
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Switching from Excel to Numbers - who's done it?
- Thread starter josh2007
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My only advise is use Excel. Numbers just doesn't have the feature set of Excel. Plus entering data into Numbers is painful at best.
I do find Numbers a little more cumbersome to use but not quite sure whether it's Numbers or just because I've used Excel all of long adult life and it's hard to switch. Can you explain what you mean about entering data into Numbers is harder than entering data into Excel?
Yeah, I'd like some concrete examples as well. I've actually found numbers superior in handling copied and pasted data from 3rd party sources such as tabled data sets from websites, for example, and it also handles UTF8 and UTF16 character sets much better than excel as well - no weird jumbled characters when exporting Nordic csv files from databases etc.
Have actually defaulted to opening csv files in Numbers even if I know I have to export out again as Excel for a client or something...
concrete examples of what Numbers doesn't have?
The number of formulas that Numbers has vs. Excel. Pivot tables, VB support, I think those are pretty concrete. If you have to import an excel spreadsheet, you typically get a bunch of errors that xyz isn't supported in Numbers.
For basic or casual useage, numbers may be fine, though as I said, imo, entering data in Excel is much better then Numbers
Just a point of clarification. Numbers DOES have pivot tables but they aren't called that in Numbers and i don't think Numbers converts pivots in an Excel sheet to whatever Numbers has.
Nope, was specifically replying to the "cumbersome data entry" point which I addressed in my initial reply to you. I find entering data, especially from 3rd party sources, much less painful in Numbers than Excel. So I asked for specific examples where you experienced data entry to be more cumbersome.
It is a bit strange to criticise Numbers (or any spreadsheet program) based on its ability to open files from, be compatible with, and export to different spreadsheet programs. Indeed it should be praised for being as compatible as it is...what I am trying to say is it should be judged on its own merits, not on how it interacts with other spreadsheet programs.
I'd also like to make clear that I am definitely not arguing that Numbers is superior to Excel overall, or should somehow take its place as the spreadsheet king. What I am asserting is that Numbers is much more capable than it is generally given credit for, especially if one takes the time and is willing to "re-learn" what they thought they knew through using a different spreadsheet program, such as Excel. Also through having used Numbers as my primary professional spreadsheet tool over the last several years, I have found that for the vast majority of users I have encountered, Numbers can just as easily produce the desired results as Excel. In the few cases I have run into where Numbers is lacking or insufficient, Excel doesn't seem to be the best tool either. A database solution would be vastly superior to both Excel and Numbers in a lot of these cases. However, and this is an obvious and big caveat - I realise that my experience is only my experience, and that it in no way do I consider it definitive. I am aware that the good old adage, YMMV, applies here in spades.
I just refer to my first post in this old thread. As @sracer has pointed out again, it's a different approach. In order to become "good" with Numbers, you have to be willing to discard a lot of the basic ways you think about a spreadsheet that you learned as an Excel user.
It's a lot like learning another language. Since the solution and method for data manipulation (or in the case of language, idea expression) is not only different in a specific instance, but also in its fundamental approach, you can't expect to directly or literally translate every solution seamlessly between the two. You have to be willing to learn the fundamentals of the program (language) in order to fully understand its subtleties and become proficient.
Because you need to type and use the mouse, you cannot do everything on the keyboard. More robust keyboard shortcuts imo.
Also, Type Jan in a cell in Excel, I can drag that cell to fill out all the months. Type in 1,2,3 in adjacent cells, I can then drag the highlight cells and continue to create 4, 5, 6 in new cells.
Same here. I quite like Numbers, and prefer it by far. Next step would simply to go with R.
Yeah, I'll not disagree that Numbers does produce a nicer looking document, but I find that managing my spreadsheets, I'm much more efficient in excel.
I'm not a power user of spreadsheets and didn't know Excel could do that. Just tried it - cool! Just tried it in Numbers and - cool! Works there too.
Odd, before typing my post, I verified that I couldn't do that in Numbers. Perhaps I have an older version of Numbers. Admittedly I stopped using Numbers by and large because it could not handle my excel spreadsheets - I got too many conversion errors.
It is not obvious how to do it in Numbers and different than Excel. You have to grab that little yellow dot there and drag.
Ahhh, I didn't even notice that extraneous little yellow dot. I always use the corner
Case in point RE: forgetting everything you think you know through using Excel, even basics like this, and be willing to become a humble padawan learner again
I suggest going to youtube and searching for iWork Numbers
Here's a video from that search:
Numbers may not have VB but it does have AppleScript. Which is a similar scripting language that can actually be used with multiple apps, including Office. I have personally used it to construct some pretty massive spreadsheets pulling data out of a SQLite database. Which was populated with data from Mail.
the only issue there is, AFAIK, it will only work on the Mac. I frequently need the spreadsheets to work seamlessly on windows, i.e., no applescript on windows.Numbers may not have VB but it does have AppleScript. Which is a similar scripting language that can actually be used with multiple apps, including Office. I have personally used it to construct some pretty massive spreadsheets pulling data out of a SQLite database. Which was populated with data from Mail.
I use Numbers exclusively and export to pdf. I dislike receiving documents such as .docx, .xlsx, .pages, .numbers, ect. I am at the end of the chain; I can understand why passing documents to different departments that have to do their magical updates / changes need to happen.
Whenever there is a formula involved I usually just write a quick web application that grabs the proper data and displays it in an organized manner.
Sorry for the thread jack, but can you explain a bit what you mean here? I have no idea and am curious.
Instead of some obtuse perversion of formulas and hidden fields in excel, I just create a web application using HTML, CSS, JS to run locally or on a server that pulls data via JSON from the source, does all the calculations in JS and displays the results in a web interface, with or without the web chrome.Sorry for the thread jack, but can you explain a bit what you mean here? I have no idea and am curious.
If I want to get really fancy (build for distribution), I package it all up in an electron.atom.io application:
https://electron.atom.io/
Much easier to distribute to users and much easier to handle complex calculations.