MacMost: Numbers

You can't lock individual cells in Numbers, but you can lock entire tables. By designing your spreadsheet well, or making alterations to an existing spreadsheet, you can only have exactly the cells you want as editable.

If you need to include something like a + symbol before positive numbers in cells, you can do it using formulas or using custom cell formatting. Using a custom cell format is more versatile and can be easily reused no matter how complex the calculation.

If you want to print or create a PDF with an area of a Mac Numbers spreadsheet you'll find that you can't do it like you can with Microsoft Excel. But there are various strategies you can use to print a selected area in a table or print only specific rows.

Anyone using Numbers should have a good understanding of different cell value types, such as numbers, text, dates, durations and boolean values.

Learn how to create simple bar charts and line graphs from a table of data in Mac Numbers. There are many options to choose from, with all sorts of customiations you can make to the charts.

A good way to learn some basic Numbers skills is to build a simple checkbook. You can use this to keep track of your bank account balance.

A new feature of macOS 10.15.4 and the latest versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote is the ability to collaborate using shared iCloud Drive folders. Once you share a folder, you can create documents in those folders and they are instantly ready for real-time collaboration with no additional steps. This can be used to work on a whole set of files with your team over the course of a project, or permanently.

Not all Numbers spreadsheets need to have complex formulas and perform calculations. Some of the most useful spreadsheets simply help you keep track of members of a group or items you own. Create a simple database like this is easy and can come in handy, especially if you save it to iCloud Drive for mobile access as well.

You can get stock prices in Numnbers on your Mac, but they are only updated daily. But by using Google Sheets you can get live stock prices. These can be used right there, or copied and pasted into a Numbers document.

Numbers is a huge app with tons of features. If you use it a lot, you can benefit from learning some tips, tricks and techniques. Learn how to autofill cells, re-apply sorts, get quick calculation results, automatically format cells, hidden keyboard shortcuts and much more.

If you have a list of names in Numbers it is very difficult to sort by last name unless you have the last name in a separate column. However, you can use a series of formulas to extract the last name and first name, format them properly as Last, First, and then sort them. It will take some extra effort to deal with middle names and initials as well. You can even get rare last names that include spaces to sort properly.

One advantage that Numbers for iPad has over Numbers for Mac is Form mode. If you want to simulate a form in Mac Numbers, you can do it using a few lines of JavaScript code in Script Editor and even make those script available in the menu bar. This could be the starting point for a more complex set of scripts that check values and even allow you to edit row data in a form too.

Creatign pie charts from a set of numbers is easy. But if you have to count occurances in a long list of data and create a pie chart from the results, it can take a second table. However, if you use Categories, you can create it in fewer steps without the need of a second table or any forumlas.

Conditional highlighting in Numbers is simply a way to change the style of a cell based on the contents of that same cell. However, by using a trick you can have conditional highlighting affect other cells or an entire row.

The IF function is how to test values in spreadsheets. You can use it to simply test a value and show different results. But the key to making complex spreadsheets to learning more about the IF function. You can pass through values when a condition is met, combine conditions with AND and OR functions, and nest IF functions for more than two possible results.

The INDIRECT function allows you to look up the value of a cell based on a cell reference. So you can take stings like C2 and find the value of the cell C2. This allows you to construct cells references from other values to create powerful lookups that refer to cells in other tables or even sheets.

With standard Mac apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote, you can revert to a previously saved version of the file to retrieve text or items you may have deleted or changed. You can completely revert to the old version, or copy and paste some text from an old version. This also works with TextEdit and some third-party apps.

If you are designing a Numbers spreadsheet to give to users that allows them to enter values then you may want to prevent them from entering values outside of a range. You can use conditional highlighting to change the color or style of a cell if the user enters a bad value. You can use a formula in another cell to indicate a bad value, plus instructions. You can also use sliders, steppers and pop-up menu cell formats to limit values.

The new version of Numbers makes things easier for those that use filters. You can also link text to other sheets in the same document and there is better performance and calculation precision. Numbers also gets the same text fill improvements as Pages and Keynote, as well as inline images and face recognition for image cropping.

It is fairly easy to use a SUMIF function to find a total for rows that meet a condition. But there is no easy way to get the total for rows inside a range of dates. By using extra hidden columns, you can easily mark rows depending on whether they are in a date range, and then use SUMIF to get the total. Getting the maximum value in that range is a little trickier, but can be done with an additional column and the MAX function.