I created a template and saved it in Numbers in the My Template folder. I subsequently decided to abbreviate the column headings which are the months of the year, but when, for example, I select the heading ‘January’ and change it to ‘Jan’ it reverts to ‘January’ when I press Enter. It appears that I cannot modify a template I create and save, as we can one of the templates that come with Numbers, is this so? Or, have I missed something.
I wanted to make the change to simple three letter headings simply because I thought it was neater. But was surprised to find I was unable to make what I thought would be as simple as adjusting the text in the ‘built in’ templates.
Device: Mac Running Big Sur
App: Numbers
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John Smith
You've got two different things happening here.
First, if you have a cell that is formatted to show a month like "January" and then you simply type "Jan" in that cell, that sets the VALUE of the cell, but doesn't change the format. So typing "Jan" sets the month to that, but then the format of the cell displays it as it was before: "January." This is because there is no default format that just displays the month as three letters.
To change the format, select the cell (probably all cells like it too) and go to the Format sidebar, then the "Cell" part of that sidebar. Then change the date format to what you want. There isn't a standard format to show just the month as three letters, but you can switch to a custom format to do that.
Then the second thing you have to do is to save this as a new template. You can't just replace the old template. So save it with a new name. Then delete the old template. You can then rename your new template to the old name if you like.
Thank you, Gary. All done.