cannot get an invoice created with IWork Numbers to open correctly in Excel

Hi Gordon,

Welcome to Apple discussions and the Numbers '09 forum.

Whar error messages or warings do you get when exporting to an Excel file format?

My guess is that your Numbers spreadsheets use some features supported in Numbers, but not supported in Excel. Without knowing more about the invoice document, that's about as far as any of us are going to be able to go.

Regards,
Barry

charles141 wrote:

Thanks for any help.

May you help all of us to help you ?

You know which template was used to create the document.
Here we don't know. As far as I know, none of us is sooth sayer.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 1 février 2011 09:59:49

I created an invoice with the given template.



I used the Save As feature to save it as Excel document

I opened it with neoOffice :




Using the Export feature, I got the same behavior.

So, now, I know that something is wrong on your machine.

May you try to run the app from an other user account ?
It's useful to learn if the culprit is in your original user Account or if it is in the global, used by every account, part of the operating system.

If the app behave well from an other account, the wrongdoer is in this account.

Often it's just a corrupted preferences file.

quit Numbers
move the preferences files :
<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Numbers. plist
<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Numbers. LSSharedFileList.plist
on the Desktop
restart Numbers which will create new preferences files
and try to create a new invoice and export it as XL.

If it behave well, you just have to trash the two preferences files.

There is an other potential culprit in the user Account :
One more time,
quit Numbers
move :
<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Caches:com.apple.iWork.fonts
on the Desktop
restart Numbers which will build a new cache file.

If the problem is a global one, here are well known tracks :

(a) you updated your operating system thru Software Update.
Hurry up, go to :
http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1349
download and apply the 10.6.6 combo updater.

(b) run a maintenance tool like the free Maintenance to repair permissions an clear every caches which the app may clear.
Maintenance is the young brother of Onyx. The developer just removed the Onyx features which may be dangerous when they are used by someone unaware of them.

Let us know the results.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 1 février 2011 15:56:28

I tested it and had no problems with exporting. All formulas are supported, there is nothing complex about this template. However, it will export into three sheets in Excel so it won't look like it does in Numbers. One sheet for each of the two tables and one for the "drawings" (text boxes).

What version of Excel are you using to test out the exported file?

If you are getting three Excel worksheets, the export is working as designed. You have to remember that the heart of an Excel worksheet is a monolithic table. Everything is aligned in a tabular grid. Numbers, on the other hand, allows you to have multiple tables on the same sheet that have different column and row widths and the tables can be placed wherever you like, offset from the other tables by whatever amount you desire in any direction you desire. The invoice template is a good example; the two tables are very dissimilar in format and in column widths. If Numbers was to export the two tables from the invoice template into a single sheet of an Excel workbook, which column widths would it use? The ones from the first table or the ones from the second? No matter which it chose, the result would be quite different from what is in Numbers. Now include some text boxes, graphics or charts. With the tables moved around and resized to align to the Excel grid, these other items would also have to be moved around. But to where. It would be impossible to make an exported file look anything like it did in Numbers except in specific instances. This is why Numbers creates separate Excel sheets when it converts to Excel.

I know that diatribe did not help you solve your problem. To solve your problem, everything must be designed as one table in Numbers. Here is how you can do it. It is a bunch of steps but is really simple to do.

1) Select all the rows from the first table.
2) Drag them sideways out of the table and drag them to the second table, inserting them just below the first row. I think this is explained in the Numbers User's Guide.
3) Add a new row below the rows you just inserted (this will become your new row 8)
4) Select the cells in row 1. Copy. Paste to your new row 8.
5) Delete row 1
6) Go to the Table Inspector and turn on Name (check the checkbox). Name it Invoice.
7) Back at the table, deselect the table if it is still showing the column letters and row numbers in order to see the table name
8) Click twice on the table name above the table to select it. It will box it in, it does not select the text.
9) On the toolbar, change the font size and color and set it to left justification.
10) Delete the textbox with the word "Invoice" in it.
11) Delete the textbox with "sincerely yours ... Your name". Or, if you want to keep it, add another footer to the table, increase the height of that new footer and type "Sincerely yours," and your name in there. Note that you use option-return to create the linefeeds in the cell.
12) Select the table and slide it up toward the top of the sheet.
13) Adjust the column widths as best you can. I increased the column width of column B and right justified the text in cells A1-A6 and C1-C6 to get it looking okay. You might, instead, choose to insert a column or two and merge some cells together to align everything like you want it. And you might choose to add a row or increase the gridline width between the top half and the bottom half. I did not do those last few things. You can play around to get the design you like best.

The export looked almost exactly like the Numbers document.



Message was edited by: Badunit

Alternatively, you can look at the invoice template provided with Excel. There is one in 2011, I assume older versions have one. The 2011 version didn't import perfectly, it needed some help with gridlines and other formatting. I assume it could be cleaned up and would export back to Excel properly. It is, of course, already a one-table implementation.

charles141 wrote:

It is such a good program, does so many things easily, I do hope this "type" of compatibility issue gets addressed in future updates.

The steps given to fix this, it would seem, could be written into the export code so that the template would be cross platform compatible.

Hi Charles,

The compatibility problem in this case isn't a Numbers problem. As I guessed in my first response, you are using features that are supported in Numbers, but that are NOT supported in MS Excel.

Badunit has offered a solution that avoids taking advantage of these features for the purpose of maintaining compatibility with Excel.

That may or may not fit your needs. If it does, then you'll need to rework your templates to nmore closely resemble Badunit's. If it doesn't, and Excel does, then your smart move is to return to the tool that fits the job you need to do, and create new templates for that application.

Regards,
Barry