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I liked the way Apple did it in their Numbers clone of Excel - you can have multiple grids on a single page. It makes it a lot easier to have related data on th

I liked the way Apple did it in their Numbers clone of Excel - you can have multiple grids on a single page. It makes it a lot easier to have related data on the same page without fiddling with the row/column sizes to suite multiple types of data.

thom 5y ago
Yep, loved using this for D&D character sheets. :)
etchalon 5y ago
Numbers is deeply underrated.
- landr0id 5y ago
  When I was in university I was working on some biology homework and didn't have Excel, but I did have Numbers! I quickly became annoyed with how smart Numbers tried to be with formatting. It knew better than me what data type some cells were and iirc it was impossible to inform it otherwise. I bought Excel after losing an hour or so of my time.
  - donut2d 5y ago
    This no longer seems to be the case. I've always found it easy to tell it what format a cell is.
- vesinisa 5y ago
  Last time I used it I believe it just crashed when opening a large CSV file.
  - maliker 5y ago
    Also the case for me with Excel on macOS. The Windows version of Excel, on the other hand, has been a lot more performant and stable for me.
    - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
      Are you using it on Apple Silicon? If so, then Rosetta is the reason why Excel are not performant on macOS. Office365 for macOS are using x86 code at the moment, Office team is rewriting Excel to work on Apple Silicon/ARM. They have a preview build out, I'm not sure when they will release the stable version. I recalled they said it should be release in Spring or Summer. If you have Excel running, open the Activity Monitor and find the app in the list. Then look at "Kind" column, you will see "Intel" listed. So that's why Office365 are sluggish on it.
      - maliker 5y ago
        Running on a 2.4 Ghz Intel chip with 8 cores. The Excel code on windows got a lot more love than the mac code. Probably due to apple's OS and processor architecture changes over the last 20 years, whereas windows maintained great backwards compatibility the whole time.
      - Tagbert 5y ago
        The Office apps are now fully recompiled for Apple Silicon
        Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
        Took me a while why Office is still using Intel code. Turns out they have "Open with Rosetta" enabled. I disabled Rosetta on those apps and it went to use Apple Silicon code. Now it is snappier than using Rosetta. Thanks for letting me know!
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        It’s a pig for large spreadsheets on MacOS on either CPU arch.
- Closi 5y ago
  Numbers is great for lightweight tasks, there just isn't the functional richness of Excel there for more complicated spreadsheets.
- brimble 5y ago
  Apple's productivity and utility software generally tends to be my favorite around. It's a big part of what keeps me on the platform. Safari? Lightest-weight usably-well-supported browser around, by a long shot. Preview? Outstanding for a bunch of reasons, including that using it is the only time I've been happy to receive PDF files. Pages, Numbers, Keynote? More than enough for everything I do, stable, and I like that I can leave them open in the background for weeks and they're light enough that I forget they're there. Notes? Not having a built-in export function is annoying and I wish I could use markdown formatting, but it's so good at everything else that those haven't been enough for me to switch to something else. Hell, I even like the calculator better than most others.
eigen 5y ago
Many things that Numbers seems to me to be better than Excel from a formatting perspective: * Freeze header rows & columns. * Naming header rows & columns. * Graphs that don't overlap the sheet. Things that I find Excel does better than Numbers from a data perspective: * Data validation * Large tables * Formula Error checking
- sp332 5y ago
  You can freeze header rows in Excel. This happens automatically if you use Insert -> Table. That also gets you the ability to name columns.
  - eigen 5y ago
    good to learn. I've only ever seen people do panes in a very poor imitation.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Excel tables are so amazing. They solve so many problems.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  "Excel" is just one specific spreadsheet application out of several. But anyway... * You can freeze header rows and columns in Excel. * You can place charts outside the sheet with data. * I'm not even 100% sure you can't name columns, but let's say you can't. So, Excel has 2 out of its 3 "missing features". Just saying.
  - 1980phipsi 5y ago
    Excel has been able to name columns for years.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      They've always done a horrible job of hiding the dialog for managing named ranges. Easy to create them but knowing where they are is a PITA.
breck 5y ago
Same thought. That made it something to watch.
eschaton 5y ago
Why would you claim Numbers is a clone of Excel? Spreadsheets existed before Excel, including spreadsheets with dominant market share: VisiCalc on Apple II, MultiPlan on CP/M, and Lotus 1-2-3 on MS-DOS. Excel was essentially a rewrite of MultiPlan specifically for Macintosh.

thom 5y ago

Yep, loved using this for D&D character sheets. :)

etchalon 5y ago

Numbers is deeply underrated.

landr0id 5y ago
When I was in university I was working on some biology homework and didn't have Excel, but I did have Numbers! I quickly became annoyed with how smart Numbers tried to be with formatting. It knew better than me what data type some cells were and iirc it was impossible to inform it otherwise. I bought Excel after losing an hour or so of my time.
- donut2d 5y ago
  This no longer seems to be the case. I've always found it easy to tell it what format a cell is.
vesinisa 5y ago
Last time I used it I believe it just crashed when opening a large CSV file.
- maliker 5y ago
  Also the case for me with Excel on macOS. The Windows version of Excel, on the other hand, has been a lot more performant and stable for me.
  - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    Are you using it on Apple Silicon? If so, then Rosetta is the reason why Excel are not performant on macOS. Office365 for macOS are using x86 code at the moment, Office team is rewriting Excel to work on Apple Silicon/ARM. They have a preview build out, I'm not sure when they will release the stable version. I recalled they said it should be release in Spring or Summer. If you have Excel running, open the Activity Monitor and find the app in the list. Then look at "Kind" column, you will see "Intel" listed. So that's why Office365 are sluggish on it.
    - maliker 5y ago
      Running on a 2.4 Ghz Intel chip with 8 cores. The Excel code on windows got a lot more love than the mac code. Probably due to apple's OS and processor architecture changes over the last 20 years, whereas windows maintained great backwards compatibility the whole time.
    - Tagbert 5y ago
      The Office apps are now fully recompiled for Apple Silicon
      - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
        Took me a while why Office is still using Intel code. Turns out they have "Open with Rosetta" enabled. I disabled Rosetta on those apps and it went to use Apple Silicon code. Now it is snappier than using Rosetta. Thanks for letting me know!
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      It’s a pig for large spreadsheets on MacOS on either CPU arch.
Closi 5y ago
Numbers is great for lightweight tasks, there just isn't the functional richness of Excel there for more complicated spreadsheets.
brimble 5y ago
Apple's productivity and utility software generally tends to be my favorite around. It's a big part of what keeps me on the platform. Safari? Lightest-weight usably-well-supported browser around, by a long shot. Preview? Outstanding for a bunch of reasons, including that using it is the only time I've been happy to receive PDF files. Pages, Numbers, Keynote? More than enough for everything I do, stable, and I like that I can leave them open in the background for weeks and they're light enough that I forget they're there. Notes? Not having a built-in export function is annoying and I wish I could use markdown formatting, but it's so good at everything else that those haven't been enough for me to switch to something else. Hell, I even like the calculator better than most others.

eigen 5y ago

Many things that Numbers seems to me to be better than Excel from a formatting perspective: * Freeze header rows & columns. * Naming header rows & columns. * Graphs that don't overlap the sheet. Things that I find Excel does better than Numbers from a data perspective: * Data validation * Large tables * Formula Error checking

sp332 5y ago
You can freeze header rows in Excel. This happens automatically if you use Insert -> Table. That also gets you the ability to name columns.
- eigen 5y ago
  good to learn. I've only ever seen people do panes in a very poor imitation.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Excel tables are so amazing. They solve so many problems.
einpoklum 5y ago
"Excel" is just one specific spreadsheet application out of several. But anyway... * You can freeze header rows and columns in Excel. * You can place charts outside the sheet with data. * I'm not even 100% sure you can't name columns, but let's say you can't. So, Excel has 2 out of its 3 "missing features". Just saying.
- 1980phipsi 5y ago
  Excel has been able to name columns for years.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    They've always done a horrible job of hiding the dialog for managing named ranges. Easy to create them but knowing where they are is a PITA.

breck 5y ago

Same thought. That made it something to watch.

eschaton 5y ago

Why would you claim Numbers is a clone of Excel? Spreadsheets existed before Excel, including spreadsheets with dominant market share: VisiCalc on Apple II, MultiPlan on CP/M, and Lotus 1-2-3 on MS-DOS. Excel was essentially a rewrite of MultiPlan specifically for Macintosh.