Import of a small Excel spreadsheet into Numbers truncates rows

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Import of a small Excel spreadsheet into Numbers truncates rows

I'm importing a small Excel spreadsheet of 300 rows by 20 columns into Numbers. Numbers happily imports the Excel spreadsheet but stubbornly insists on truncating the import at row 128! Any ideas how I can have numbers read all 300 rows? I have a large iMac with truck loads of Ram so memory is not a limiting factor. I have rechecked the importing excel spreadsheet with two other spreadsheet apps and they happily read the entire file. Why not numbers?

iMac, 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Aug 31, 2012 2:44 AM

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Answer 1

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Jerrold Green1

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Aug 31, 2012 3:49 AM in response to BillF13

Bill,

That "small" Excel spreadsheet is rather large for Numbers, but well below the absolute limit of rows or columns or total cells in Numbers. The thing that puts 300 Rows by 20 Columns into the large Numbers spreadsheet category is that it will run slow, especially if there are calculations.

How about deleting the first 100 rows in Excel and seeing where the import stops when converting to Numbers. Will you get only 28 rows, or will you get the 28 plus another 100? Maybe try copying the Excel table to a new Excel document and try importing the new document. Lastly, you could see what happens if you put the entire Excel table on the Clipboard and Paste it into a Numbers document.

This is the first case of this sort I've seen that didn't involve an iOS version of Numbers.

Jerry

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Answer 2

BillF13 Author

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Aug 31, 2012 8:49 PM in response to Jerrold Green1

Jerry,

Thanks for the rapid suggestions.

The answer is that Numbers is, how shall I put this delicately, pathetic. Being primarily powered by a graphics engine, it can only handle a very very small number of rows and columns at once. I'd forgotten my tests from a few years ago on medium sized spreedsheets that resulted in me abandoning any hope of using Numbers and instead purchasing a spreadsheet called Tables. This has real grunt and power without the graphics overheads.

I thus took your suggestions on board and cut my imported spreadsheet down to 50 rows by 20 columns and hey prestow it works. My primary motivation here was to have a particular spreadsheet available via iCloud on my iPad in Numbers. I have now achieved this objective.

Thanks again,

Bill...

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