how to edit and save excel spreadsheet on mac

PeterSabina wrote:

Can you suggest where I can find the .numbers file on my machine?

Hi Peter,

The file is likely where you save your other .numbers documents. I find it very handy to save Numbers documents in iCloud Drive, so they sync across other machines.

In Finder, you might see something like this:

In any case, there is nothing special about the converted Excel documents. They're just like any other Numbers document and are typically saved wherever you are saving your other Numbers documents.

SG

when you open the excel doc, Numbers will create a new document. select the menu item "File > Save", Number will prompt you where to save the file.

you may see a modal dialog like this:

This dialog allows you to choose the folder by selecting from the pop-up menu to the right of the "Where:"

if you want to pick, specifically, then single click the "\/" to the right of the pop-up menu to see the full Finder navigation dialog. It will look something like:

before you click the button "Save" you should change the name if needed to the desired name. It will most likely be set based on the name of the excel file you opened.

Finally, to see the "Save A..." entry in the File menu hold the <option> key while the File menu is open and you will see the menu item "Duplicate…" change to "Save As…"

When you open an Excel document in Numbers you are actually importing it. Numbers turns it into a Numbers document with the .numbers extension. So when you reopen, you need to open the Numbers document, not the original Excel document.

To convert back to Excel you can choose File > Export To > Excel in the menu.

Bear in mind that the conversion from Excel to Numbers and then back to Excel is not perfect. If you are collaborating with people who use only Excel and frequently need to send documents back and forth then you likely will be much happier just using Excel.

SG

to clarify what SG stated. When you open an existing excel file with Numbers, Number imports the excel file into a new , temporary, Numbers document. The .numbers file does not formally exist on you machine until you save the document. You could try to locate the temporary files if you want.

There is no Number way to open/modify/save directly and excel document

The Numbers process is:

excel document -> import into Numbers into a temporary document

modify as needed

export from Numbers back to excel

if you want to retain the changes, save as a Numbers file.

if you modify the contents of the new document, you can export an updated excel file (or maybe save over the previous file). The whole process for collaborating with excel users in Numbers is really not great. IF you dod this often, I suggest working in excel

Hi PeterSabina,

You might try starting to save the imported document again and notice where it would be going. Notice I said "starting to save". If you actually save it to the same location you will be overwriting it.

quinn