Does Numbers do the following?

Hi Jerrold,

Thanks for the info.

I think it should be clear that I was not telling users what to do.

One would hope though, that Apple support staff would participate in these forums, to help support their products. While reading the forums, one would hope that they would take suggestions for improving the product. Does no Apple staff read and participate in these forums?

Unfortunate that the Numbers spreadsheet doesn't freeze panes. It is strange that I cannot find any spreadsheet for Ipad that will do all three. I bought Office 2 HD for Ipad, and found out that it will only do freeze panes, but not the other two. I asked the support staff of the product "Documents to Go", and they said they support both Freeze Panes and Hide and Unhide, but not Autofit. I think that QuickOffice also only supports Freeze Panes, but not the other two.

Interesting then that Apple's "Numbers" supports the other two, but not Freeze Panes, the one that seems to have the most support in other products.

I really need all three though, for my main Excel usage.

Perhaps I will have to wait until Microsoft makes "MS Office for Ipad"!

Well, I would hope that Apple adds the other two capabilities to "Numbers", soon!

Thanks again for your input.

Thanks for the info, Tom.

Unfortunate, I think, that Apple doesn't have support employees participoate in the site, who could help with user's problems, read suggestions and concerns, etc.

I found and downloaded a user manual ffor Numbers 2009 here on the Apple support site. Is that still the current version, 2009? No updates since then? The manual also does not say whether it is for the Mac version or Ipad?

In any case, the manual does say that you can freeze the header row and header column, which are all that I would want to freeze. I also see hide and unhide rows listed in the manual.

The one that I don't see is the third one that I mentioned: Autofit. It is a very useful feature of Excel, when one is typing lots of text into cells.

It works like the following, if one has the row height set to autofit.(I thnk one can also do that with column width, but I have only used it for row height:

Of course the row heights and column widths are initially how you set them manually..

If however, one is typing lots of text into a cell (with word-wrap), more than visibly fits in the cell. The width of the cell will remain fixed how set, but the height will grow to fit the text you type in, so that it is all visible. (And of course that grows the height of the whole row, not just an individual cell.)

Might auto-fit have been added in a later version than 2009?

No manual for the IOS version?

Someone wrote in another thread that the Mac version does have what I called Autofit, although not called by that name.

I don't know if the IOS version has the same features or not?

Thanks for the links, Tom.

Although those are good support links for Numbers for IOS, it would be nice to have a comprehensive manual for the app. It doesn't come with one?

I couldn't find answers to the questions I asked about three features in those pages.

Can anyone tell me if the three features I asked about in the OP are present in Numbers for IOS--frozen panes (or frozen header columns and rows), hide and unhide columns and rows, and autofit? (The last one might not be called autofit in Numbers. After I described what it is (described in this thread too), said that feature is present in Numbers for Mac, as the default behavior if word wrap is on for that row.) (In Excel it is not the default, but can be set to autofit the row sizing.

It seems like the featuers may all be available in Numbers for Mac, but I am trying to find out if they are avaialble in Numbers for IOS. Anyone know?

Also, in importing and exporting Excel, transferring files to use between Excel for Windows and Numbers for Mac, is the formatting caused by those features retained?

Thank you.

In looking at the link where one could type in a word or phrase to look for (in help for Numbers IOS), I found out a couple things:

I think the freeze feature is certainly there, as freeze header row or column.

The other two still are not clear.

If one looks up hide, there is information on unhiding hidden columns or rows in an imported document, but not about hiding columns or rows in Numbers for IOS. Surprising that Unhide would be supported but not HIDE? Does anyone know?

If one looks up word wrap, one comes up with nothing about it at all, for instance on the following page about text: http://help.apple.com/numbers/ipad/1.6.1/#tan72718cd2 . That is surprising. Hard to imagine that there is no possibility at all for word wrap in typing text into a cell,. Or perhaps that is the default, and no option not to word wrap, so not mentioned, as it always happens? (And of course if it does, that doesn't really answer about auto-fit.)

Anyone know?

Hi Jerrold,

I already bought Office HD2 hoping it had the features I wanted, and it didn't. Better to find out in advance.

I think what is listed as "Freeze header row and/or column, would be what I need in that respect.

I disagree that the ability to hide rows or colums isn't important. spreadshetts can become very long. For printing, for example, one might want to just print out certain columns, and hide those in between. (But not delete them, as one may well want to unhide those columns later.

That brings me to something I did not mention above--the excel function "set print area". In Excel you select the cells you want printed, then choose "Set print area", to make it clear that is the data you want printed,.I would guess there to be something similar in Numbers?

I hope a Numbers for IOS user will help answer these questions. I am surprised that none has yet.