Can I import old excel files into Numbers?

As you probably know you import an Excel document by simply opening it in Numbers (via File > Open in the menu).

Numbers has trouble opening really old Excel documents with the .xls extension. If you have any of those you can try converting to .xlsx by opening them in LibreOffice (an open source clone of Microsoft Office) and then "Save as" .xlsx.

Numbers should be able to open any Excel document with the .xlsx extension.

However, because Excel and Numbers have such different designs, not everything in Excel converts well to Numbers.

Also, some Excel formulas may not work. You will see that those are flagged. If you have any of those formulas, post here for suggestions on how to convert to a Numbers equivalent.

SG

Numbers does not have links to cells in other documents/files. You will need to put the two (or more) documents together as one or develop a way to copy/paste the necessary data from one to another. I am not aware of any AppleScripts to do the equivalent job of "updating links", though it would be possible to write one that could do the equivalent job.

There are no "named cells" in Numbers. However, the default behavior in Numbers is to use the text in the header column and row to create cell names. If B1 has "January" and A2 has "Income", the cell at the intersection of the two, cell B2, would be given the name January Income. Personally, I prefer this feature turned off, I prefer using the cell addresses.

Numbers and Excel are different. Excel is the more powerful of the two and the more compatible of the two; nearly everyone who uses spreadsheets uses Excel. Excel can handle larger spreadsheets without bogging down. It has some functions and features and some graphs and graph formatting settings that Numbers does not have. It is great, except I can't stand using it because I find it harder to use and it takes me more time. I find Numbers to be so much easier to use and quicker for making smaller spreadsheets, which is most of what I use it for. With either I find that straying too far from the default formatting starts to make things difficult and annoying.

I would try and see. Without specific information about the version of excel. It will be hard to answer. Worst case is that it won't work. I think it is likely to work