The advantages of numbers are ease of use and typesetting. If you are not an accountant and just want to do some statistics, calculations and screening with tables, numbers are enough. Its nearly 30 built-in templates are more like examples to guide us how to use them than styles. From the classification and naming of templates, we can describe the positioning of numbers. For example, personal classification includes: calendar, schedule, running records, home decoration, travel plans, recipes; Financial classification includes: personal budget, personal savings, loan comparison, mortgage calculator; Business classification: employee schedule, invoice, break-even analysis; In the classification of education: attendance registration, grade book, probability experiment. These tables describe the positioning of numbers: making statements and reports for the purpose of data presentation, analyzing data according to the data carried on the page, and using them as lists and planning manuscripts.
Unlike Excel, which has a full screen when it is opened, Numbers tables are placed as objects on a blank page, and there can be multiple table objects in a form. In addition to tables, you can easily insert pictures, text boxes and charts. The whole process will feel like typesetting. Smart guides will provide reference when you scale the object, and the size of the table is also done by dragging and dropping.
Numbers is a "movable table" and Excel is a "world in the grid". When you open Numbers for the first time, you can click the "prompt" icon on the toolbar to help you understand the function and layout of the software by labeling it. Press and hold the dot icon in the upper left corner to move the table in the page, and adding columns and rows is also an intuitive button way.
For more settings about rows and columns, click the expansion triangle icon on the row or column directly. For example, in the function menu of rows in the diagram, you can hide table names, set header rows, hide rows, and add and delete rows. This interactive mode is also reflected in other iWork software, that is, to provide interactive operation around elements as much as possible, and to provide users with an intuitive and convenient experience with the response of the right setting panel.
Each Numbers file can contain multiple forms, each form is equivalent to a page, and each page can contain multiple tables and other objects (charts, text boxes, images, media). Each table has its own unique name.
Data references between different tables will start with the table name, and cells in the same table will be calculated with rows and columns as coordinates. For example, the third row of column B is B3, the fourth to sixth rows of column B are B4: B6, and "$ b $2" means the second row of column B. Both "reserved row" and "reserved column" are selected. If the second row of column B is referenced by another table on the same page, it is displayed as "Table 1: $ b $2", and if the formula is called in other forms, it is displayed as "worksheet1:table1:$ b $2", and the cell positioning is separated by double colons.
Numbers table is divided into text area and title area in format and content. Select the name of the table to set the title, footer and outline of the table, select a specific cell or click the point in the upper left corner to set the grid lines and staggered colors of the table, as well as the data format, borders and padding of the cells.
The grid setting of the table is also different from that of Excel. In Numbers, you can decide whether to display the grid lines (vertical and horizontal) in the body area or the title area by lighting the five icons below the grid lines in the Table panel. However, you cannot modify the default grid thickness, style and color of table styles. If you want to set a different grid, you need to go to cell settings and select a cell or area to set the coverage "boundary".
In Excel, some cells are circled to set a grid, while the table inserted in Numbers exists as an independent object, and there is a grid by default. The grid control in the table panel will be applied to the current table.
All settings of Cell will override the table style, including padding and borders. In other words, even if other table styles are changed after setting the cell border, the cell padding and border setting are still valid. To clear the cell settings, you need to expand Fill ① to select the default table style, and the same is true for clearing the border. Select cells and expand border settings ② Select Restore, Clear and Restore to restore the table to the default style of table style.
The grid lines and padding of tables in Numbers are based on table styles. Applying different styles can quickly change the style of the table. Cell margin and border settings are only supplementary settings.
The padding or border settings of individual cells in a cell are not applied to the table style template. If you want to apply border or padding modification to the table style, you must select the whole text or title by region when selecting cells, then adjust the padding, border thickness, line type and color, ① set the border or padding, and finally right-click the table style ② to redefine the style of the selected part and apply the modified style ③ to the table style.
The "List" in the Numbers template demonstrates the actual use of tables to list items. The cells in the first column are all "check boxes" that can be selected. This data format is different from traditional numbers, texts and dates, which is very convenient in some occasions. Other special data formats include: star rating, slider, stepper, pop-up menu, and there is a special type of "duration" in time classification, which can be pressed.
In usage scenarios, check boxes can be used to make shopping or planning lists, recipes, personnel roll calls and other types of forms; The star rating can be used for the annotation of software, songs or works, because it can also be easily slid to change the star rating; The slider and stepper are specifically set with maximum and incremental values, so it is more convenient to record the increase and change of numerical values than to input them. Subitems in the pop-up menu can be added by themselves, which is very convenient for processing forms, such as gender, region, medical insurance hospital and other items in the personnel list, which can be used to improve efficiency.
The expression of date and time can be customized to a user-defined data format. In addition, it also provides a rule setting mode for digital data formats. For example, when displaying the file size, you can add rules to add KB suffixes for numbers less than 1000 and MB suffixes for numbers greater than 1000. (here, only the rules of data format are used for rough judgment, and the size cannot be calculated accurately.)
Click and drag in the lower right corner of the cell in Excel to copy or fill in the numbers sequentially. When you select one or more cells in Numbers, a yellow control point will be displayed, and you can copy the content directly by dragging this yellow point. So, if you select a cell according to the inertia of Excel, and then you drag the control point, you will find that you only get the copy result, not the serial number. In the logic of numbers, you need to select two cells (let the software know that you want to grow in sequence and the increment is clear), and then drag the control points to get the result of sequential filling. So you can get "1, 2, 3, 4……" or "1, 3, 5, 7……".
The freezing of header rows and columns has been set in the default digital table style, which can be seen from the chart of table style. In the chart, the title row and column use black areas different from ordinary columns. That is to say, after you insert the table according to the table style, the freeze has been set. You can select a row or a column and click on the small triangle above to modify it.
The advantage of freezing a row or column is that the frozen row or column will remain unchanged when the table content exceeds the page, or when the page content scrolls. If the current page contains multiple tables, it will have its own setting to freeze rows or columns. The settings of each table are independent, and the frozen columns, styles, color fills and so on are independent.
The above is mainly about the difference between using feelings and habits. From the perspective of table operation, the real difference lies in the support of various functions, which is also the gap between ordinary players and professional players. Specific functional differences can be found in the compatibility list of Numbers and Excel in Apple official website.
Although Numbers simplifies many functions that are not commonly used in professional computing, to be honest, most people rarely have the opportunity to use them. How to balance ease of use and professionalism depends on your usual working environment and document exchange. For me, I use both. I process Excel files of companies and exchanges in the Windows virtual machine, and use digital analysis to make report documents myself, because both of them look like table processing, but they are really different, so it is better to have both.