setting print area

Flash.

There are no handstands required to print the content of the clipboard. It's the same for every app in OS X. It's a consistent interface that works fine, and is a good one to commit to memory.

I gave the same feedback to Apple as you, prior to learning my way around the OS. Now I am sorry that I bothered them and am of the opinion that anyone who can't adapt to this simple OS X tool should stay with Excel.

Jerry

Jerrold --

I have been with Apple since the Apple II, learned spreadsheets on Visicalc, and had the first Mac. I learned Excel first, and tried to like Numbers, but Numbers has always seemed deficient. I keep expecting Apple to remedy the problems, but Apple seems to have stopped making improvements.

As suggested in this forum, I copied the Excel part and put it into Preview, but it was one column too wide and there was no way to set the print to landscape. In Excel, I could get to the Page Setup and set printing for landscape. In Excel, I could hold down the SHIFT key and select "Copy picture", which I could then shrink as needed to fit the space I had.

I ended up using GRAB to select the area, and pasted it onto a Pages file which I could shrink and print.

Apple used to be "user friendly". If everyone is supposed to learn techniques which they use only a couple of times a year, then Apple is no longer user friendly. Even the HELP file is useless. Saying that users should learn special techniques, and then not giving Help for those techniques, is NOT user friendly.

I like the Mac, and will stay with the Mac. The deficiencies of Numbers made me buy MS Office so I could get my work done.

Bruce

The problem is not Apple, it's you. 😉

It seems that you tried to print from Preview with the bare Print Dialog.

Clicking the dedicated button (pointed by the red arrow) give the complete dialog which gives the ability to change the orientation.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 9 avril 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

I discovered tha the script which I built to print a selected area was not available in my public BOX (address below).

Now it is. Download :

• public_YK›
• for_iWork'09›
• other_iWork'09 items ›
• subset_of_document_to_jpeg.zip

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 12 avril 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

Yvan --

Thank you for your suggestions. I can now print an area. However, it is NOT as easy as a simple PRINT AREA command, especially when the area is slightly bigger than the page.

The problem is not with me, it is with Apple, and with those of you who have lost sight of the origins of Apple as being user-friendly. Why does Apple not have a Help screen to help with these features? Why do they delete the Save As command in Pages and have no Help screen telling how to achieve the Save As function without having a Save As command?

I think my own solution of using GRAB to get a photo of the area that I want, and then pasting it into Pages or whatever so I can shrink it to the desired size, is best when the area needs to be adjusted to match your final printed paper.

Apple is getting less user-friendly. We should not have to come to Discussion groups to get solutions to common problems.

Bruce

With my script it's really easy to print an area.

Using Grab is not so good. With it you get a bitmap document while my scheme gives a PDF one which is a vectorial one.

The printed resultat is highly better.

I'm not an Apple representative so I don't know the answers to your questions.

I never use the Numbers help because from my point of view the User Guides are highly easier to use.

The way to achieve the defunct Save As function is described in the User Guides but Apple can't read them for you.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 13 avril 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

I advocate having both Numbers and Excel (2011) if that's feasible, based on extensive work with Excel. I see some features where Numbers blows away Excel, and others (like Set Print Area) where Numbers is 'way behind'. I've often found that when I need access to a set of related functions, two (or more) programs are needed because Program 1 "can't do X properly" and Program 3 does (assuming file formats are not an aiisue).

So for this Set Print Area function, I would Export the Numbers file to Excel and do printing here, if the work-arounds within Nubers are too much trouble.

I agree that Apple is getting less user-friendly; but this seems inevitable for what is now a true manufacturing giant operating across at least three distinct, if overlapping, markets. So, thank God for these user-to-user communities. This thread on the set print area function has been great for me -- thanks to all.

I have downloaded your thing for iwork 09 but how do I use it when I'm in my spreadsheet? Macbook air for xmas and day 1 of numbers- 2 hours in and horrified to find no print area! Thanks

Yvan does not post here anymore.

Rather than being horrified that there is no "set print area", you could try to use the tool (i.e., Numbers) as it was meant to be used. It does not follow the same paradigm as Excel which has monolithic tables that require you to set the print area. I know that there are cases where being able to select a range of cells and quickly print them is a useful feature, especially in large tables. There have been more than a few threads on how to accomplish the same basic thing in Numbers. The quick and easy way would be to select the cells, copy, open the Preview application, File/New from Clipboard, Print.

This is ridiculous. Excel and Word are both far superior in comparison. I say this after trying to get my head around both Numbers & Pages for several years. Simple things like the user being able to manipulate what is printed on ONE page should be straightforward and not require writing a script. In Excel you go to print view and manually move the bold blue lines to where you want the pages to line up. Why is that so difficult?

This is simple, Apple is good for graphic design, photographers, etc. Microsoft is good for business, documents, spreadsheets, etc.

Hi Scott,

If you can accomplish what you want to do more easily using MS Word and/or MS Excel, then yours is a pretty simple decision. Use the tool that's best for the job.

If you want to see a change in the way an Apple application works, this forum, populated by users of the application, not by developers of the application, and not actively monitored by Apple, isn't going to very effective in getting that to happen.

Current Apple applications contain a link to Apple's Feedback pipe, where you can sent your request for a feature to be added to or to be enhanced directly to Apple. You'll find in in the Application menu. In Numbers, that's the "Numbers" menu, and the menu item is "Provide Numbers Feedback."

Regards,

Barry

Hello. Thanks for the instructions. Unfortunately I don't know how to "copy to clipboard" and can't find any function in NUMBERS.

Copying to the clipboard is one of the most basic operations in using a Mac. In almost any application, you can select "Copy" from the "Edit" menu, or type ⌘ C and the selection will be copied to the clipboard.

Thanks... just not a function I was ever aware of.

I have tried it. Selected text from information in a website.

Opened previed and was not able to "file/new from clipboard"

Works from Numbers (which is the topic in this Discussions area):

Does not work here with text copied from Pages, or from a web page.

The same text, placed into a Text box, and the text box copid to the Clipboard, can be made into a Preview documnt:

Looks like text must be in some sort of structure to be suitable.

Further information might be had from the users in the OS X community for the OS X version you are using.

Regards,

Barry