If I recall correctly, it was the behavior of Appleworks that if you added, say, column B, making the old column B into column C, all references to B throughout were automatically changed to C. This does not happen in Numbers. Is there any way to make this the default behavior or a different command to add rows/columns that causes references to automatically be adjusted accordingly?
I think that Numbers works pretty much the way you want it to. There may be others who have more experience and can tell you when it may not work, but for me, Adding and Deleting rows and columns results in cell references being adjusted.
OK, this is going to make me sound really stupid, but I actually was so confused and tired that I meant the exact opposite of what I said. I was making a ledger-type spreadsheet keeping a running balance, and I wanted cells in the balance column to continue referring to the cell directly above them rather than to one absolute cell that used to be directly above them. That's how it works in Appleworks. I think.