How to add a form in Numbers?

Hi j,

Apple has chosen to not add a Form feature to Numbers for MacOS.

If you think it is a necessary addition to Numbers for Mac, Provide Numbers Feedback, using that menu item in the Numbers menu to make your case for that need and how it would benefit you and other users of Numbers for Mac.

Here, you are talking to users of the hardware and software. Apple participation in these communities is limited to hosts/moderators who check for compliance with the terms of service, and Community Specialists, who scan for posts which have not had a response within a period of about 24 hours, and return responses which are mostly links or references to knowledge base articles they think will help the user solve his/her Mac issue.

Apple leadership and application production teams do not participate in these communities, but are presented with the feedback issues that are sent via the Provide … Feedback channel. You will get a direct response ONLY IF Apple needs more information on your issue, but your message (and other similar ones) do get read, and may speed the introduction of the requested feature in a future version of the application.

Numbers for Mac doesn't have forms. With the bigger screens on Macs (compared to the iPhone and most iPads) there really isn't much need for forms. You can just enter the data directly into a table.

SG

I solved my problem by using LibreOffice. It's amazing how well a 'free' product satisfies such a complex feature as a form generated from the spreadsheet.

What it really means is that Apple has no interest in actually providing a better product, given the Numbers has been around for about 15 years.

I suspect you don't actually use spreadsheets that have a large number of columns. Even in my iMac I'd be hard pressed to 'easily' navigate across an entry to a cell on the right, fill in couple of entries then move on to the next one, which may not be the next row, if one is updating entries, based on selecting them from information in the cells to the left.

And a 'big screen' doesn't help with having even a 20 across by N down spreadsheet, and displaying 100 lines. That 2000 cells to frost your eyes over, in 8 point font.

jeclarkiii wrote:

I suspect you don't actually use spreadsheets that have a large number of columns.

That is correct! I avoid a large number of columns because that quickly becomes cumbersome, not just in Numbers, but also in Excel.

In general it is much more efficient to arrange data so that it is "tall" rather than "wide", and use several special purpose tables rather than one big expanse of cells as in Excel.

SG

Forms are commonly used in database apps such as Base in LibreOffice. Less so in spreadsheets, which are good at other things. Glad you were able to find a tool that works for you. Keep in mind that, unlike Numbers, LibreOffice will not work on tablet or phone.

In my experience, the cross-platform improvements in Numbers have been striking in recent years. The Numbers of 15 years ago, despite having the same name and some file compatibility, was a completely different app.

SG