Learn How To Use Numbers In 5 Minutes

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Know a little something about spreadsheets and want to get started with Numbers fast? Let's go.

So after you start Numbers go to File, New to go to Template Chooser. You can choose from one of many different templates here. If you just want to start a blank document to create your own thing then double click on Blank.

Now a Numbers file or document can contain one or more sheets. Add more with the Plus button, like that. But it is also common to just have a single sheet in your document. Each sheet can include one or more tables. This is a table right here. You can see there's a lot of room on the sheet. You can add another table and actually as many as you like. Each table contains any number of individual cells. Cells are arranged in rows which are horizontal and columns which are vertical. In most tables the first row will be the Header Row and the first column will be the Header Column. Use the Header Rows and Columns to label things. Here I put four labels for four columns. Then in each row I just add the data.

To enter data in any cell just click on the cell and you can just start typing. So I'll enter a date here. I'll use the Tab Key. It goes to the right for the next cell there. You can keep entering data across the rows using Tab to go to the next cell. Ideally you want no blank rows in your table. When you want to add a new row just select a cell in the last row, press Return, and a new row is added.

Think of each table as a small database of like information. Here are some examples. Here is something a teacher might use that has each student in their class and the grade they had on each test. Here's a table that keeps track of sales with dates, product, and amount for each sale. Here's a table someone might use to keep track of the books that they've read. Here's a table that keeps track of consulting hours for freelancing.

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Numbers has a lot of tools for making your data look good. You can go in the right Sidebar, under Format, go to Cell, and here you can set a background Fill for the cells. You can set the Border. You can go to Text here and change the Font, the color, the justification. All sorts of properties. If you go to Table in the right Sidebar you can choose from some preset styles for the tables. For instance, you can make your table look like this or this or this. You can also Format the data in cells very easily. So I can click on the Column Heading there and then go to the Format Sidebar cell, set the data format to currency. Each table includes a title that you can customize up here. You can also add lots of other elements to the sheet. For instance, you can click here and textboxes, shapes, arrows, all sorts of things. You can use these to explain how your sheet works so you can remember for next time.

Once you have data in a table you can manipulate the data in a lot of ways. Use the little button to the right side of a Column Heading there and you can Sort very easily by that column. You can also Filter here. You can use Quick Filter and only show certain values. But you can also go to Filter Options here and then create complex filters using multiple columns.

Perhaps the biggest feature of Spreadsheets is the ability to do calculations with formulas in cells. If want to calculate the total cost I will use the Equals key and then I could enter a formula into this little box here. Click here and then it will select that cell. I'll use Shift 8 for an asterisk for multiplication. Multiply by this cell, but I'll just click on there and I get my result. If I Copy this and Paste it here you can see that the date has updated to match the row for each one of these.

You can also calculate things like averages and totals using a Footer Row. I'm going to click on the last row here and select Add Footer Row Below. Use Sum and then I'm going to select the entire column and then right parenthesis, like that, and I'll get a total.

The best thing about formulas like this is everything updates when you change the initial values. If I change this from a 4 to a 5 you see the value here changes and then the total will change as well. Whenever you are entering in a formula the right Sidebar here changes to a list of functions and you could browse through all the functions. So if you want to know how to do something just start a formula and then start searching through the Functions and reading descriptions.

You can also use another table for calculations. I've got one table that contains all the data for expenses. In this table I've got.totals that I want to calculate. What I'm going to do is use a formula that's going to use SUMIF and it's going to look at the values in this column, compare it to the value in this cell, and then give me the total sum for everything that matches from that column. If I Copy & Paste it here it will change to reflect the value in each one of these cells.

Another thing Numbers does is Charts. So I can select, say, this table here and then I will use the Charts Button here. Select Pie Chart and it will create a Pie Chart from the data.

That's my quick start guide to Numbers. Check out my course on Numbers and other videos I've done on it for a deeper dive into various subjects. Thanks for watching.