How can I import excel files and manipulate in numbers?

You can control-select an Excel file then select Open With and select Numbers. Alternately, from Numbers' Open dialog select an Excel file.

Regards,

And of course, as always in AppleLand, you may drag and drop the Excel document's icon onto the Numbers's one 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE dimanche 13 avril 2008 15:49:00)

You cannot import Excel files in Numbers 08, you only export them to Excel.

dengosha,

From the Numbers Help:

Importing a Document

You can create a new Numbers spreadsheet by importing a document created in _Microsoft Excel_ or AppleWorks 6. Numbers can also import files in comma-separated value (CSV) format, tab-delimited format, and Open Financial Exchange (OFX) format.

This works for most of us.

Jerry

if i open a csv file it puts every row into one cell. no comma separating. how do you import a csv?

May you tell us which is the separator used in your CSV file?

Numbers is able to treats CSV files using really the comma.
Most of the time, in Europe, we use the semi-colon and Numbers is unable to import our files directly.

Try to open one of your CSV into TextEdit or Pages.

You will easily recognize the character used as delimiter.
Assuming that it is the semi-colon,
Use the Find Change tool to replace every semi-colon by a tab.
Then select all
copy to clipboard
paste into Numbers.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 14 juin 2008 20:07:36)

I fixed the csv import problem by simply correcting the filename I was trying to import. When I downloaded it from my bank, the filename looked like this:
filename.csv.xls

I took off the .xls and made it:
filename.csv

It works just fine for me now. I'm not sure if this is your issue, but you may check to see if this easy fix works for you.