Using Handy Forms In Numbers On Your iPhone and iPad

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use Forms on your iPhone or iPad.

There are more features on the Mac version than there are on the iPhone version. But there is one really cool feature in Numbers that is only available on the iPhone and iPad. That's Forms. The ability to add and edit data in a Numbers table using a form that shows you one row at a time. So I'm going to use the iPhone here to demonstrate but it works the same way on the iPad. 

I'm going to go into the Numbers App and let's create a brand new spreadsheet here. Let's just create something really simple to keep track of expenses. So maybe this first column here, I'll just make this the Date and I'll add some other columns for some other things. So I'll have one column here where we describe the expense. An other that will be the amount. Then the Category for each expense and then some Notes. Let's go here and get rid of the extra columns so we just have what we need there. Then let's name this table Expense. You can see the problem here on the iPhone is that this is all pretty small. If I want to enter in data here I've got to double click here on this field and then enter in each individual thing. It would be great if there was a way I can zoom in on this. I can but now I'm scrolling across to see each one. A better way to do it is to just focus on the one row. The one expense at a time. That is exactly what Forms does.

So a form is another kind of page in Numbers. Usually you've got sheets and you've got multiple sheets, each can hold multiple tables. But if I tap the Plus button here I can add a new sheet. But, I can also add a new form. Then it presents me with some choices. I can create a blank form. But in this case I already have a table that I want to use with this form. So I'm going to look here. It shows a list of all Tables. I just have one sheet and one table on that sheet. But if I had multiple sheets with multiple tables it would list them all. The Expense Table is the one I want to use. So I'm going to select that.

Now you can see at the top I have Sheet 1 and Expenses Form and here is the form. You can see each column of the Expenses Table. Date, Expense, Amount, Category, and Notes. I can enter data by simply tapping on each one and then typing the data. So, for instance, I can type, say, January 31st here. I can put the name of an expense like, let's say, Rent. I can enter an amount. I can enter a Category, like that. Now I can click Done there at the top and I can see the whole thing. If I go back to sheet 1 note that the data in the table has been updated to include the data I entered in the form. The Form is just another way of accessing the data in the Table. It's actually the same data just viewed in two different ways. 

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Now let's improve on this some. First, let's get rid of all the blank rows here. So I'm going to get rid of all those so I just have this one line of data. Then I'm going to go to each column and I'm going to set a good format for it. So I'll double click on A here and it's going to select all of the cells, except for the Header cell, in A. I'm going to use the Paintbrush button there and now I'm going to go to Format here, at the bottom. I'm going to set the Format to Date & Time. I can tap the i button here and I can pick a format. Let's do that. I'm going to pick this format right here. You can pick whichever one you want. Then I'm going to do that same thing here for column B. This time though I'm going to Format with Text. So I'm just going to allow text entry here. Let's go to C and I'm going to format this as Currency. So a number value and I'm going to use a thousand separator, counting style two decimal places and US dollars. Category here I'm also going to set that to text so I can type whatever it is I want. The same thing here for Notes. I'm going to make that text. 

So now when I go to the Expenses Form you can see the data there from the first row. There's a Plus Button here to add another entry. I'm going to add another entry. When tap here on Date notice how the keyboard at the bottom reflects the data format. So I just have Numbers and a slash, things like AM and PM, and all of that. Things that have to do with a date. There's also a handy little Today button. I'm going to use that. It enters in that date. This is plain text so I can enter in what I want here. Then I go to amount and you can see here it just gives me numbers. So I can enter in the amount, like that, and then Category is back to text. Then Done. Now I can see this data here. 

Now that I have two entries I can use the Back Button here to go back to item one of two or the first row. The Forward Button now to go to two or two, the second row. So I can actually go through the date in my table with these arrows. I don't have to view it in the regular table format. I can always use the form. I can use the Trash or Bin button here to Delete and entry and the Plus button to Add a new one. I can, of course, just switch back to this sheet to go back to the table. But if this is a more complex spreadsheet with many sheets and many tables I can use this handy button here to go directly to the table that this form represents. 

Now let's go and make this even better. For Category instead of typing I want to be able to just choose a Category. So I'm going to double click here on the Header to select All of the Value Cells here and go back to Format. Instead of text, which is what we set this to, I'm going to set it to Pop-Up Menu. When we do it is going to look at the value there so far and add them in. So Housing & Utility, I can an add a new one, like for instance, Clothing. Let's add another one for Entertainment. So now that I've set the format to be Pop-Up when I go back to the form here and go to Category and tap on it instead of being able to enter Text I can select from this list here. You can do the same thing with other columns. 

For instance, let's add a column here and call this one Priority. Then I'm going to double click here on the Heading to select it  all. I'm going to set the Format here to a Star Rating. But I can also choose things like Checkbox. I can choose Separate to step through values or a Slider to have a slider to choose like a value from 1 to 100 or 1 to 1000. That kind of thing. Now when I go to the form here notice I've got the Stars and I can just tap it to choose. Also note that you can set a lot of these things like formatting up here in the Forms Interface rather than a regular sheet interface. This button here you can tap that and I can see each of the items here. For instance I can go into date and tap i and I can choose the format there just like I did with the table. The same thing with other things. Like here is Priority and it is set to Star Rating. You can also reorder things. So I can move Priority up right after Amount, like that, and then tap Done. When I go back to the Sheet notice how it has changed the order of the columns to match the form. 

Also, back here in the Form if I go back into Settings I can add a new Field. That comes in handy if you tap the Plus Button and create a new Form and just decide to create a completely blank form. You can see how you get to the same place here. It gives you three sample fields. You can go in here and change the name. You can change the format in here. You can drag these around and reorder them. Because I created a new form that wasn't linked to a previous table, notice I've the form, but I've also got a new sheet called Form Data where it created a table and that table is linked to a form. 

If you're wondering what it looks like when you open that same spreadsheet in the Mac version of Numbers, well you simply see the regular sheets, the forms are not there. All of your data if there because every form has to be linked to a table in a sheet, which you can access in Numbers on your Mac. You just can't access that data in a form format. 

So if you ever need to use spreadsheets on your iPhone give Forms a try to make things easier for you. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.