Are there any advantages to Numbers over Excel?

Some of the templates shows Numbers' advantages. Multiple tables on a page, etc.. You might check them out for ideas. For power, Numbers does not have the features of Excel but then Appleworks or M$ Works did not have the power of the full Office apps either.

Regards,

Some advantages with numbers are:

* Easy view of referenced cells.
* High quality graphics in printed output.
* High quality typography in printed output (like ligatures and old style number - even though that functionality seems buggy).

There are more things along the same line, but if you do not care about the visual output, I cannot see any reason to leave Excel.

Alas, about the only advantage of Numbers over Excel is that Numbers is cheaper.

Apparently one can have fancier formatted displays and output. But in doing what a spreadsheet is suppose to do, Numbers falls far short.

As an alternative, check out NeoOffice and OpenOffice for Mac. Both are open source and free and have a lot more features than Numbers but probably not as many as Excel.

One should perhaps add that Excel is not the mother of all solutions either. It is a great spreadsheet application and it has plenty of useful features that are not in Numbers. However, I have numerous times banged my head against the wall, when Excel was unable to do what I wanted it to do.

There is no perfect spreadsheet.

If you want something pretty, go for Numbers.

If you want something useful, go for NeoOffice/OpenOffice.

If money is no problem and you want those additional features, go for Excel.

I have used Excel for my gradebook for several years. Switched to Numbers this year and will not look back. I have done more in less time than ever. You have to really rethink the data and how you display it. I did find myself having to make a new table now and then when I realized I had not taken the proper approach to the data. But overall, I have a better control over where my students are this semester than ever before. And I find it much easier to make a custom table when I want to see something different. Love Numbers!

If Apple would just do two things I would be using it right now at work and home- 1) ability to iterate (most of my spreadsheets have to do this), and 2) display calculations using "precision as displayed", both as in Excel and NeoOffice. I have put them to Apple on the feedback form, but I can only keep my fingers crossed.

Hello

You wrote: +I have put them to Apple on the feedback form, but I can only keep my fingers crossed.+

Caution, you will have to keep them crossed until (at least) Numbers 02 (in iWork '09) 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mercredi 28 novembre 2007 13:30:27)