EXCEL lover - NUMBERS...ah...hate it!

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Background...I'm a retired financial guy...Ok ...bean counter to some of you...I made the transfer to Apple a year or two before MS dumped XP on my HP desktop. I'll admit I grew up using a lead pencil and my fingers and then moved on to "office machines" and then computers where I found Lotus1-2-3. I then migrated to MS EXCEL. I became very proficient using EXCEL. Then when I migrated to my Apple i-Mac I bought NUMBERS. Try as I have I just am NOT comfortable (call me stupid I guess) with NUMBERS. I took my old HP to my basement, knocked out the internet connection and am continuing to rely on EXCEL. I know as long as I have a crutch I will never have to sink or swim with NUMBERS, but 2 years into it I hate it! Has anyone here found a GREAT tutorial of how to bridge from EXCEL to NUMBERS? Please advise!
 
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Odd you never stayed with Office 2011. Still the best suite imho although others here will disagree.
 
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Odd you never stayed with Office 2011. Still the best suite imho although others here will disagree.

I never got to Office 2011 since I was way back there in history loving XP. I may be a fossil, but EXCEL worked fine for me! LOL
 

chscag

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If you're using a Mac and hate Numbers, then why not buy MS Office for the Mac? A new version (Mac Office 2015) should be released soon (according to MS). Mac Office contains Excel along with Word and Powerpoint.
 
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If you're using a Mac and hate Numbers, then why not buy MS Office for the Mac? A new version (Mac Office 2015) should be released soon (according to MS). Mac Office contains Excel along with Word and Powerpoint.

Thank you - I didn't even know such software existed! Guess I should add that I live in cave somewhere, huh? LOL How much and where do I buy it...or did you already tell me that and I missed it?
 

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I have been doing spreadsheets for probably 20 years but got used to Numbers for what I do today, which is mostly finance sheets and my budget, without an issue.

Like was said above, if you truly can't live without Excel, get the Mac version. It works great. If I were running a business doing exactly what you do, I would be using Excel, but for what I do here Numbers is fine.
 
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Office 2011 is pretty meh, and many of our Mac users who are heavy Excel users, we end up moving them to Windows because Excel 2011 for Mac is so troublesome.

One can always hold out hope for future Mac Office 201X to be better but who knows.
 

chscag

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Troublesome in what ways? I have both Mac Office 2011 and Windows Office 2010 and find both pretty much work the same way. Doing some things in Mac Office is different than doing the same thing in Windows Office but that's because of the difference in operating systems.

And for your information and others.... Microsoft was programming for the Mac (Word and Excel) long before they released versions for MSDos and Windows. However, if you like Windows better, that's your choice. :Smirk:
 
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Our users who handle large, complex spreadsheets complain of hangs, lockups, CPU pinning, and Excel 2011 just being uncooperative. Move to Windows, the problem vanishes.
 
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Ron, get the ms office for mac but don't give up on numbers. I'm assuming your not getting back into the business world and just looking to keep track of personal finances and gasket sales lol. On a smaller scale also look at the free LibreOffice which I use for some word documents and basic spreadsheets.
 
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I use excel all the time with lots of sheets and formulas etc. I use Excel 2013 on my Windows work computer and Excel 2011 on my MB Pro. I have not had any problem sharing the same spreadsheet between the two versions. There are some differences but nothing that is too big an issue.

I tried Numbers and I just didn't have the patience to try to figure out how to make it do what I knew how to do in Excel.

Here is one source for Office 2011:

Amazon.com: Office 2011 for mac

There may be cheaper options available if you search for them.

Lisa
 
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Agree Lisa Excel works great in Office 2011.

Do complicated spreadsheets brecording ticket and function sales.
 
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chas_m

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I can see where someone who is used to Excel would be flummoxed by Numbers, since while it does much of the same thing, it does it in a TOTALLY different way.

I, personally, have always **hated** spreadsheets, so let me be clear about this. I've used Excel, but you might as well stick me in a tiny cubicle with a pointy-haired boss as make me use it routinely. I come from a graphic arts and design background.

And this is why Numbers (on the very rare occasions that I need to use it) works very well for me. It's a desktop publishing app for spreadsheets, aimed at those who need to use tables and spreadsheets to make a presentation or annual report or something like that. You CAN open up the Excel-like template of a single, page sized spreadsheet and work on it in much the same way one would with Excel, but it's really designed as a blank slate in which you put smaller spreadsheets or tables around that are unlinked or linked as you like, and make look beautiful.

And yes, for the actual science of doing spreadsheets, Excel is better. It had a 30-year head start on Numbers, so this is somewhat unsurprising. When it comes to advanced spreadsheeting, Excel is king.

Numbers is what you use when you have to prepare a visual for the boss.
 
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Thank you - I didn't even know such software existed! Guess I should add that I live in cave somewhere, huh? LOL How much and where do I buy it...or did you already tell me that and I missed it?

Amazon has the download of Office for Mac, ~$100 - fairly inexpensive (by Microsoft standards ;)).
 
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Ron, get the ms office for mac but don't give up on numbers. I'm assuming your not getting back into the business world and just looking to keep track of personal finances and gasket sales lol. On a smaller scale also look at the free LibreOffice which I use for some word documents and basic spreadsheets.

Thank you, Pat!!!
 

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At this point, you're probably better off getting an Office 365 account. The $99/yr home version gets you five licenses, a massive amount of OneDrive storage (I have 10TB for example and yes, that is a T, not a G), Skype credit and most importantly, free upgrades to new versions of Office. So, should MS release Office 2015 for the Mac this year (as noted by them), it'll cost you nothing to get it.
 
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Our users who handle large, complex spreadsheets complain of hangs, lockups, CPU pinning, and Excel 2011 just being uncooperative. Move to Windows, the problem vanishes.

I run Excel in a virtual machine most of the time.. for this reason. But for most spreadsheets, the Mac version is fine.
 

dbm


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I'd suggest trying OpenOffice too, another free app. Their spreadsheet app looks very much like the pre-ribbon version of Excel.

You can download it from OpenOffice.org
 
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Re Open Office, only if you want to do some programming in Basic: there are a lot of differences from VBA Excel under Windows, but the how-tos are available under Help and other searches of the net. It's there, but you have to look for it.
 
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WLH


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I would say give Openoffice a try. I'm also a retired bean counter and my 1st exposure to computer spreadsheets was Lotus and in the 90's moved to Excel. Before I retired I moved to Mac for my personal use and I have found Open Office to be the best solution for me.
 

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