Importing Excel Problem & Sorting Columns Problem

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Importing Excel Problem & Sorting Columns Problem

I have encountered two annoying problems (so far) in my transition from Excel to Numbers in iWork '08. Many of my Excel spreadsheets won't import--I receive "The document can't be imported because it's too large" message for pretty small spreadsheets. The latest one I tried was only 72Kb. What's the story here?

My second problem involves sorting columns. I really like the ability to sort column data using the reference tab. But, if I sort one column, and then try to sort another column, the first column's data won't stay sorted. I've tried inserting a blank column in between the two columns I want to sort, & have tried sorting by selecting columns individually, then using the sort & filter box, selecting both columns data, then using the sort & filter box, and all to no avail. I can easily sort column data in Excel & what is sorted stays sorted, so this is very frustrating.

iBook G3, iMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Sep 6, 2007 5:48 AM

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Answer 1

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Sep 6, 2007 7:35 AM in response to mountainmamma

Hello

Look at the passed screenshot to get a workaround to the sort limits.

In this sample, columns B and C are sorted but NOT column A.

You may grab the sheet itself from my public iDisk folder.
The sheet is entitled: "4Delattre.numbers"

<http://idisk.mac.com/koenigyvan-Public?view=web>

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE jeudi 6 septembre 2007 16:22:2)

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Answer 2

jimdoc

Level 1

49 points

Sep 6, 2007 9:35 AM in response to mountainmamma

I really like the ability to sort column data using the reference tab. But, if I sort
one column, and then try to sort another column, the first column's data won't
stay sorted.

As with many aspects of Numbers, this is a matter of re-thinking how a program for manipulating numerical data ("Numbers") is designed.

You are not sorting A COLUMN, you are sorting A TABLE.

When you sort by a different column, you are re-sorting the table.

The nature of a table in Numbers is that all the data in a row are related, linked, not independent. and the paradigm is that they cannot be independently sorted within the row.

Data that is independent, that the user wants to be able to sort independently, goes in another table, as Yvan showed.

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Answer 3

Sep 10, 2007 10:45 AM in response to jimdoc

Merci Yvan and jimdoc--I guess I'm just wanting Numbers to be a little different from what it is, particularly when I want it to do things that I can easily do in Excel. I primarily use a spreadsheet as a gradebook, so I'm not really asking it to do much that is very complicated and just assumed that sorting a series of columns independently of each other was doable. Thanks again and I'll post under a different topic to try to get an answer to my question about importing excel documents and receiving the "too big" file size message.

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Answer 4

jaxjason

Level 5

5,063 points

Sep 10, 2007 12:57 PM in response to mountainmamma

you can check one thing in excel... for the too big problem...
First, are you using Excel 2007 in Windows to get this file? Or 2008 beta on mac? Either one will allow you to use over 1million rows and excess of 256 columns wide. Either will give you an error here. The tables in numbers are restricted to the 'old' values from excel 65536 rows and 256 columns.

Save as an old version and it would most likely work.

If this is NOT the case...

go into excel and use the command (ctrl on windows) and press the END key. If this takes you further out/down than the actual end of your table, then excel is remembering the furthest cell out that has been edited.

How you erase that 'memory'... select all the columns you are not using, then right click on them (or use the dit menu, or any of another dozen ways) and click delete. do the same for rows. I think you can select all 655536 rows by selecting the first row to delete (by clicking the number at the left, not selecting the actual cells), then hold down Shift-Cmd and press the down arrow. Now delete those as well. Save.

If its not one of those two issues then its submit feedback time. (which should be done anyways).

Hope it helps,
Jason

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Answer 5

Sep 10, 2007 1:44 PM in response to mountainmamma

I have the same problem regarding importing. See my topic "File Size", Robert Maziarka. Good luck!

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Answer 6

Sep 11, 2007 5:01 PM in response to mountainmamma

I was trying to import spreadsheets created in Office 2001 for Mac. The problem did seem to be related to all the "extra" rows & columns the spreadsheets I was trying to import. Since I set up my spreadsheets to have different tabs for different aspects of each course, going through & deleting all the superfluous stuff was more trouble than simply copying & pasting the real data into a new spreadsheet. Thanks for the information.

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