Numbers and growing a table

Trann · Dec 11, 2009

Using Numbers '09.

Need to update an 8-column table with data on a regular basis.

I've written a Perl script to parse the raw data into a tab-delimited file with 6-columns. I then open the file in Numbers, which gives me a usable table.

I want to add this table to the 8-column table. I attempt to cut and paste but, although the data is dumped, two things are making this awkward:

1) the new rows have no formatting,
2) the new columns have no calculations.

My questions:

1) how do I enforce all new rows to continue with the same formatting as existing rows (or is that even possible)?
2) how do I copy calculations into new columns? Cutting and pasting from existing cells with formulas to new cells without fails ("beep") for no apparent reason.

Confused...

Trann · Dec 11, 2009

Inspiration struck, but not from the side I was expecting. I was so frustrated attempting to find a way to expand this table from within Numbers that I realized I could attempt to fake it out at the command line level...

For the sake of sharing, I simply added two extra print statements to the Perl script which are formulas. They're nothing complex or secretive so here's how it appears:

Code:

  print WH "=IF(ISERROR((F$row)-(C$row)),0,F$row-C$row)";
  print WH "\t";

  print WH "=SUM(\$F\$1:\$F\$$row)-SUM(\$C\$1:\$C\$$row)";
  print WH "\n";

Open the table and, poof, all the calculations are there and the results are properly interpreted. If there is a more elegant solution from within Numbers, I'd love to hear it.

The question on adding rows to an existing table that continue the formatting of each column still stands.

Numbers and growing a table

Trann

Trann

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