Proper Use of Header and Footer Cells In Numbers

Header and Footer rows and columns have special properties in Mac Numbers. They label the cells in the body of a table, and also exclude themselves from calculations. You can scroll and print with better results using headers too.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to properly use Header and Footer rows and columns in Mac Numbers.
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So when you create a new table in Numbers usually you get one that looks like this. You could see that you have these gray cells at the top and on the left. This is a Header Row. This is a Header Column. The cells there are a little bit different than the ones you see here in the body of the table. There are several different things that make the cells in the Header Rows and Columns different. It's important to understand this difference to get the most out of Numbers. 
For instance here we have a Table and I named it Class. I have a Header Row here and a Header Column. Now the contents of the Header Row seem pretty simple to understand. They are simply the headings for each column. This column contains names so the heading is Name. This column contains grades so the heading is Graders. This column contains the number of absences and this is notes. So each one is basically a title for the column. The Header Column here contains students ID's. Each cell has a value in it. Now when possible you should make the things in the Header Column unique ID's. So think of every row as a record in a database. What's in the Header Column is the unique identifier for that row. So a name, for instance, may do in some cases. But since lots of people have the same names if your table is big enough you're going to have duplicates in the Header Column. So it's better to use something like maybe an ID number. The same thing say if you had a table of expenses. You may be tempted to put the date in the first column in the Header Column. But often you're going to have multiple expenses on the same day. So that's not a unique identifier. Something like a transaction ID or a check number would make for a unique identifier. In this case we have student ID's. 
So far this just looks like it's an organizational thing. I need to organize this Table using a Header Row and a Header Column. But they are some ways in which the values of these cells behave a little differently. For instance, if I go to this table here and I want to simply refer to a cell in the other table I'll use equals to enter a formula. Then I'll simply refer to this cell. Now this cell is C5. So you may think when I click here to refer to it I would get C5. But in fact what I get is Grade S640. Grade is the value in the Header Row and S640 is the student ID from the Header Column. I can actually type C5 but of course since it's in a different table I'm going to want to type Class, the name of the table, then two colons and then I could do C5. You can see it will then convert to show me Grade S640. Or I can simply type the reference using the Header values. So if I type Grade S640 you could see how it figures out that it's from the table Class without me having to enter that. Now you could see it simplifies it knowing that there is no other table with a Grade column and a S640 row. The proper use of Header cells allows you to get away from using references like C5 and instead use things that make sense. 
Let's look at another example here. Here I have a Driving Log. It has dates and for each date the number of miles that were driven and the amount of gasoline purchased. So when I refer to a cell here I can click on say the number of miles driven on February 4th and you could see the reference is Miles and then the date. You could see I could just type that. I'll hit equals here and then do Miles and then 2/5 and you could see it actually even auto completes. So I can just hit Return and you see it fills that in. You could see another Return then completes that entry. Now I have a reference to that cell without having to figure out that this was, in fact, the 6th. Not only that it works in Functions as well. So if I wanted to get the Sum of all miles driven I could do Sum, parenthesis, and if I click on the letter of the column here it actually fills in Miles, not B. So it takes the name from the Header cell. Now I can clearly see that this is the Sum of Miles.
So what else do Header cells do. Well, let's extend this table so it's longer than the screen. So now you could see here I have a lot of rows. Now you would think that if I would scroll off the screen it might be hard to remember what the column's names are. In fact the Header Row will stay there. So as I scroll you could see that the Header Row freezes. The same thing actually happens with the Header Column here. So let's say I were to add a few more cells there and you could see I could scroll over and you could see the Header Column stays steady. Now this is actually a Setting. If I go to Format, Table you could see under Headers and Footer I can click here and there is Freeze Header Columns. I could also go to Table and you could see Freeze Header Rows, Freeze Header Columns. You could turn those off. Now you could see the whole table scrolls up. So you loose those Header Rows. This also works for Printing. So if I go to Print one of the options I have here is Repeat Table Headers. So now when I look here I've got Page 1 and I see on Page 2 it actually repeats the Headers there. It would do the same thing for the Columns if this extended horizontally across pages. 
So another important aspect of the Header cell is it doesn't count when you actually try to perform calculations on it. So it looked perfectly natural before when I did a Sum of this column here and it gave me a sum of all these numbers. It's not going to include this Header cell here, Miles, because why would it. Even if it included it that's not a number. But what if I were to use Average instead and then use this column. The question is, is it going to compute the average of these cells based on the fact that there are 9 of them or 10 including this cell here in the Header. The answer is that it won't include the Header cell. So Header cells are not included when you use a function on an entire column. 
Now what about Footer cells. A Footer cell is like a Header cell except it appears at the bottom. So to add one here we don't want to just go over here and add a Footer cell. Like that. It will turn the last row into a Footer which isn't what we want. The same thing if you were to go to Table and then Footer Rows and set it to 1. Instead what we want to do is Add an extra row. So it's a blank row there. Then we can use either option to Add a Footer Row. So let's add one there. Notice that the Footer Row does not continue the Header Column. The Header Column there is empty. This is not meant to be an individual record like the other rows. This is meant to be some sort of summary of what's found in the table. So you typically would put something like Sum and then select this column here and you could see it identifies it as Miles and then you get the sum here. Note that's only counting the cells in the body. It's not counting the Header cell and it's not counting the Footer cell itself else it would be doubling itself. 
Now another thing about Footer Rows is that they always stay at the bottom. So if I select this cell here and I hit Return to add another row, notice it adds another row and pushes the Footer Row down. 
Now I can have multiple Headers and multiple Footers. When I want to add another Header what I would do is select a Table and then I could use this menu there or I could go to Table, Header Rows and go to 2. This will extend to the next row the Header. So if I really want to add one after already having some data I want to Add Row Above or I can simply use the Add Header Row above. That will both add a new row and make it a Header Row. Now when you have multiple Header Rows things get a little complicated. It won't count any of these cells when you do Sums or Averages or anything like that. But it will take the name from the lowest Header cell. So if I were to add some information here like another word then refer to a cell you could see it takes the lowest word there. Header Rows are not a good place to say put a Sum like that. It works but then the reference takes this value, you could see it says 680, instead of Miles. So if you want to do multiple calculations on a row it's best to do those in the Footer. I can click here and add a Footer Row below, like that, and add another Footer Row and then maybe here is the Average of what's in the body for this column. I can use the cells here in the first column as labels. So this could be Sum and this could be Average. 
So I hope that gives you a little bit of insight in how to best use Header Rows, Header Columns, and Footer Rows in your next Numbers project.

Comments: 4 Responses to “Proper Use of Header and Footer Cells In Numbers”

John Gardner

3 years ago

Thanks for the Video on Numbers Heades and Footers - great! Especially for this like me painfully converting from Excel to Numbers.
I would like to add some information to either the Header or Footer when printing:
1. The current date and time (to be automatically updated)
2. The file information of the Spreadsheet: Name, Path, Tab

thanks for your help and keep well

Gary Rosenzweig

John: Don't confuse the "headers" and "footers" for printing with table headers and footers. Completely separate things. You can access the print headers and footers for each page when you go to print a document. You can put anything you want in there. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202981

David Shemuel

Like John G (above) - I miss ability to add Headers/Footers available in Excel. One really useful feature was to be able to automatically insert Path/File Name (&Path/&File/&Sheet), plus (updateable) Date & Time - the link Gary provied (thanks, Gary) does not discuss File Name (automatic) .....

Robert Kunes

I, too, like to have a cell in my spreadsheets that shows the path and file name. I am still not clear on whether there is a way to do that in numbers.

Comments Closed.

Proper Use of Header and Footer Cells In Numbers

Comments: 4 Responses to “Proper Use of Header and Footer Cells In Numbers”

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