How to automatically update today's date in the header, print section on Numbers

What are you referring to as "each header in each tab"?

If you mean the Tab identifying each Sheet in the Numbers document, your observation is correct. Tab labels are "Sheet Names" and must be entered directly by typing or by pasting.

If you mean the box displaying the name of each Table, your observation is also correct. Table Names, like Sheet Names and Document Names, are placed in boxes that do not accept formulas. Default names for these boxes are generated automatically when each Document, Sheet or Table is created. The default names are "Untitled", "Sheet", and "Table", each followed by a number indicating how many Documents on 'this Mac are named Untitled, how many Sheets in this Document are named Sheet, and how many Tables on this sheet were named Table when 'this Document, Sheet or Table' was created and included in the count.

These names are editable, but cannot be created using a formula.

You can, though, place a formula that will return and display the current date into a Cell in a Header Row of a Table. Tables on other Sheets can get the date with a simple formula:

=Sheet 1::Table 1::A1

with the Sheet 1 and Table 1 names and the A1 cell reference replaced with the actual names and address of of the cell containing the TODAY() formula.

Note that "Pages" exist in Numbers ONLY when you are in Prepare to Print mode or are actually printing the document. If you need each Sheet to be a separate Page when printed, you will need to limit the content of each sheet to what fits on a single page of the paper you are using.

Regards,

Barry

curlydog wrote:

I can't seem to find a way to get numbers to automatically insert today's date into the print header. I have a spreadsheet with several tabs and each time I want to print, I have to manually tell it to set today's date in each header in each tab.

Unlike in Excel (and perhaps other spreadsheet apps) you can't automatically insert the current date when you print. You have to update the date manually.

You could give feedback to Apple via Numbers > Provide Numbers Feedback in your menu.

SG

SG

"In Numbers it would seem that the Header and Footer "ribbons", or whatever Numbers calls them, are only visible when you go into print mode. "

Numbers gives them the same name as they have in Pages: Header boxes and Footer boxes, Header in this context being short for 'running header', a space at the top of each page that carries the same text from page to page through the whole document or through a Section (or Chapter) of the document.

In Pages, these headers and footers, if used, are always visible on each page (with exceptions where the user/author has chosen to not show them (usually on the opening page of a chapter).

In Numbers, pages are defined ONLY when the user is Printing the document or Preparing to Print. When editing the document, there are no 'pages,' and the 'page headers are hidden,

Header boxes and Footer boxes contain only entered data, with one exception: A page number calculator can be placed in a Header box or a Footer box, where it will calculate and display the page number of each page (in Pages), and the page number of the page to be sent to the printer in Numbers (when in Print Preparation or actually printing).

Table Header rows contain Header cells. Those cells can contain entered values (eg. Column and Row numbers or names, or formulas that calculate and display values depending on values in other cells on the table, or on internal sources, such as the system clock and a Formula consisting of the TODAY function.

Here's an example:

The yellow filled cell is in a Header row. The other two cells in that row are empty, have had the 'header grey' fill changed to No fill, and have had the upper and vertical cell borders removed to leave only a single cell visible in the row.

The first screen shot shows a section of the table in Edit mode, taken on Nov 22, 2022.

Pressing command-P changes the screen to Print Prep mode. Pages appear, the running header text appears on each page, Table Header rows (1 and 2) are repeated on each page, and the page number of each page is shown in the Page Footer's centre box at the bottom of each page.

After taking the screen shots, the document was closed, and saved to the Mac's data SSD.

More to follow…

Numbers as you can tell has never tried to have feature parity with Excel. It has a different design philosophy. It doesn’t seem to be designed to print out highly formatted documents. It could be that many users, like me, seldom need multipage printed output. In fact I don’t even have a printer any more.

It wouldn’t hurt for you to spend a minute or so to give feedback to Apple. You likely won’t receive a response. But your input may help in design decisions.

SG

Here's what I saw on reopening the file the next calendar day:

And in Print Prep view:

As can be seen, the Date in the Table Header row has changed to show the now current date.

Regards,

Barry