How to layout a page in numbers 3.0 -- I can't edit in print view

Hi Mars,

You should look to your Peers like Yellowbox who provides solutions to Users Real Problems.

Within the context of this Post and Thread, and my own opinion, I stand by words and feel if anything I understated.

If you disagree with my workflow solution, please point out the flaws and enlighten us to a more efficient workflow in context with Print Layout.

That's the problem: I couldn't really find a new workflow solution in your post, though there was reiteration of points already made upthread:

1) Give feedback to Apple via Numbers > Provide Numbers Feedback, and

2) Use 'File > Export to > Numbers '09.'

I think you will find that second possibility already mentioned (even illustrated by a screenshot) upthread, by .... well, I'll leave it to you to read.

The roundtrip to Numbers 2 and back can work well in some situations, but carries with it the usual possibility of not-quite-perfect conversion between formats (and sometimes corrupted documents). Though handy occasionally, I would be cautious about trusting too much of my important work to repeated round-trips. The package formats used for Numbers 2 and Numbers 3 documents differ significantly.

I very much agree with you that Yellowbox provides excellent solutions, including those upthread. Kudos to Ian. That's why I was surprised to see the workarounds upthread seemingly dismissed in your post. With those workarounds, working directly in Numbers 3 (and its cousins in iOS) surely is a better option for many users who do not need to do as much precise printing to paper as they used to. That does not include all of us, but I suspect it includes more and more of us.

SG

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Layout guide for A4 portrait (saved in My Templates)

In conjunction with:

Menu > View > Show Rulers

Menu > View > Show Guides

Menu > Numbers > Preferences > Rulers > Tick every box

Print Preview (the guide could be retained as a border, or deleted).

It took me longer to write this reply than it did to arrange the page 😉.

Regards,

Ian.

SGIII

I apologize profusely to you and any other previous post that I dismissed.

Obviously I am wrong in my opinions and any solution I may have shown to use in my work flow is wrong.

I will petition my my boss to get rid of our printers and tell him print is dead.

Any way to automate multiple pages some how? SGIII says that Numbers 3 Apple Scripting is very powerful, perhaps there is a solution there.

I just spent some time building custom templates for my iPad and they will certainly help when using my iPad and printing (I know, I really should not be printing, but our business is still in the dark ages, requiring printed reports, catalogues and marketing material)

We print to many paper sizes, A4 with 1.3 cm Margins, 22x29cm China Print pages with many custom margins, Letter with various custom margins.

Many of our reports consist up to 15 pages on my iPad, I suppose I could cut / paste Box images, but it seems margins and page sizes are not really exact in Numbers 3 and after 4 pages the Page Boxes bleed over to the next page. Looks like I need to get the right spacing per box per page, and calculate in the Line Thickness of the Box.

Also, my printer has many many custom print sizes that will not show up in Numbers 3. Is there a way to reveal custom page sizes?

I will petition my my boss to get rid of our printers and tell him print is dead.

...Or, of course, you could together choose the tool best suited to your current task!

If you're doing lots of precise printing to paper, it seems pretty clear that Numbers 3 in its current iteration isn't for you (or your boss). Numbers 2 and (I think) Excel are much better at that kind of thing. With Ian's neat workarounds, Numbers 3 has us reasonably well covered in lots of printing situations, but your situation is pretty tough with all those formats and custom print sizes.

I don't think scripting (which of course currently is only possible on the Mac, not on the iPad) will help much with your pagination problems because scripting essentially automates tasks you could be doing manually. There are certain things you can do to script templates, as described here https://iworkautomation.com/numbers/template.html. But doing what you need, if possible, would take a lot of work.

SG

You are amazing SGIII Thank You!!!

Wow!

Hi marsofearth,

In Print Preview > Printer & Page Size this is what I get with 'Any Printer'

When I select my printer,

I don't see a way to create a custom paper size.

The margin settings are hidden (God bless 'em). Drag the Print Setup panel up.

Oh well, an improvement over Numbers 3.0 where we were stuck with 1 inch margins.

Regards,

Ian.

Okay, thanks. Just thought I'd check.

Same type of selection options (albeit different per printer) with no way to select the custom printer page layouts as in Numbers '09

Only just started using Numbers 3 as of 3.5.2, pretty much exclusively for iPad.

Only just started using Numbers 3 as of 3.5.2, pretty much exclusively for iPad.

On my iPad I seem to have only two options: US Letter and A4 (never tried to use either, and don't even have those two options with Excel on the iPad). So the Mac version of Numbers is more versatile, as one would expect. But precise pagination clearly has not been a top priority. Perhaps Apple would rather have us "print" to its devices than to something made by HP, or some other company.

Presumably the current Pages (which I don't have) is better at that, so in some situations perhaps it may be possible to run a print workflow through Pages. Is that a possibility, Ian? I see that Numbers can export some things nicely to Keynote via script, but there isn't much on Pages.

SG

Pages 5.5.2

Menu > File > Page Setup (OMG!) > Paper Size > Manage Custom Sizes (OMG squared!)

I haven't tried this.

marsofearth, search (or start a new discussion) in the Pages for Mac forum. A Pages guru may be able to help. However, I find that forum to be rather negative. Instead of looking for ways to make something work, many replies are "Use Pages '09 and rate Pages 5 in the App Store").

Regards,

Ian.

P.S. Thanks for the lively discussion. I think it is leading us somewhere.

Hi Folks,

marsofearth wrote:

Any way to automate multiple pages some how? SGIII says that Numbers 3 Apple Scripting is very powerful, perhaps there is a solution there.

I just spent some time building custom templates for my iPad and they will certainly help when using my iPad and printing (I know, I really should not be printing, but our business is still in the dark ages, requiring printed reports, catalogues and marketing material)

We print to many paper sizes, A4 with 1.3 cm Margins, 22x29cm China Print pages with many custom margins, Letter with various custom margins.

Many of our reports consist up to 15 pages on my iPad, I suppose I could cut / paste Box images, but it seems margins and page sizes are not really exact in Numbers 3 and after 4 pages the Page Boxes bleed over to the next page. Looks like I need to get the right spacing per box per page, and calculate in the Line Thickness of the Box.

Also, my printer has many many custom print sizes that will not show up in Numbers 3. Is there a way to reveal custom page sizes?

Yes, I can see how the Page Boxes would gradually bleed over to the next page. Here are two pages (I haven't tested for more) where I have allowed a little leeway (just the width of a bee's knees) inside the margins. If this is too fiddly, you can make the margins narrower (rather than loosing paper real estate by making the boxes smaller)

The blue lines are Guides dragged from the rulers. Line them up with the calculated position (paper size minus margins from Print Setup).

Here is a close-up of the page intersection

Print Preview

Getting there!

Regards,

Ian.

Created in Numbers 3.5.2

Getting closer to easy layout in multiple (paper) pages

Calculate the required size of the Layout Guide (Page Box) from Numbers > Print... > Print Setup > Printer & Page Size > Page Orientation

That will show the paper size. On my machine, it shows millimetres (mm).

Other measurements in Numbers (Margins, Rulers, Arrange > Size) are in centimetres (cm).

OK, let's not have another Hubble Telescope disaster (confusion over mm Vs thousands of an inch so the mirror did not work).

I am working in mm throughout.

Use some leeway within the page margins. I suggest 5 mm inside the margins.

My method is clunky and I don't think I have the formulae correct in the A4 Portrait Mid Guides, mm Table.

Document is on Dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwy3ritcoo7473p/Layout%20Guide%20multiple%20pages%20tr y.numbers?dl=0

Print Preview to test my clunky method for multiple page layout in Numbers 3.5.2

Regards,

Ian.

That was a hurried reply to beat the timeout.

The aim of that method is to calculate the size of a Layout Guide (Page Box, Rectangle) and drag Guides from the rulers to the centre (horizontal and vertical) of each page. Copy and paste the rectangle and drag to align with those centre-of-page Ruler Guides.

Please check my formulae.

Goodnight,

Ian.