Hi Gary, I recently stumbled across your videos while looking for help about numbers and I have to say they are fantastic!! I just had a few questions regarding numbers. I recently became treasurer of a committee and I have to keep track of the budget, deductions for a total that is constantly changing. I wanted to use numbers so I could have a starting amount, then as we spend, the total changes and then the next amount will change the new amount;thus, there will always be a new total to deduct from. So if I start with $2820.00 and we spend $135.00 then the new total will be $2685.00. Then if i deduct another $100.00 (this is in a different cell) then the new total will be $2585.00. The problem is I’m fairly new to numbers and I don’t know how to do this, though I really want to learn how to do these kinds of things. Your help would be greatly appreciated!
— Michael Dreyfus
I would recommend getting a good book on spreadsheets -- at this level it doesn't matter too much whether you are using Excel or Numbers, spreadsheets pretty much work the same.
In your example, I'd have one column (B) that is a running total and one column that is the expenses (A). So the first row would be column A blank and then column B would be 2820. The second row would be 135 in A and then B would be =B1-A2 for a total of 2685. The next row would be 100 in A, and then you would copy and past B2 into B3 which would adjust the formula to =B2-A3 (2585). You just keep adding expenses in column A and then pasting the formula in column B.
I am working with numbers and the have a simple formula of col A * Col B. The formula is in column C. I get the following answer. 152*.19=28.925. The actual answer is 28.88. This has happened numerous times. I have to start a new sheet each time. I try to save this as a template, and I get the same errors each time in the same columns. Any insights?
Hard to tell without seeing it. I've never seen Numbers (or Excel) be wrong. Perhaps check and double-check the cells and the formula.