Q: Numbers 3.1 unfinished features
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Mar 23, 2014 8:48 AMby Jeff Shenk,John,
To start at the bottom, nobody here knows what Apple intends, because we don't work for Apple. (And Apple generally doesn't allow anyone who would know to comment on something before it is released.)
There are a lot of things in Numbers 3 which seem incomplete or unfinished. Apple will probably improve some of them.
That being said, I don't think most of your comments about styles are correct.
I haven't worked with Numbers 3 much, so I might have some of the details wrong, and if I do someone will probably correct me, but I think there are six built-in table styles, which are available at the top of the Table pane of the Format inspector. There is no way to make a custom table style. In addition to the six styles, the drop down under Table in the toolbar has five different configurations of tables that you can insert depending whether you want to include a Header row, a Header column, a Footer row or a checkbox column.
Table Styles apply to tables, not cells. If you select a single cell in a table and then choose a different Table Style from the top of the Table pane of the Format inspector, it will apply to the whole table. If you apply a "Green Headers" style to a table that doesn't have any headers, you might not see much change until you add a header to that table.
Character styles seem fairly limited, but if you select a piece of text and apply a combination of character attributes (like both bold and italic) that is not already included in the list, the plus sign will become active, and you can add your style to the list.
If you modify the style elements of a text box (and keep you selection point in that text box) the "Create Style" menu item will change from a grayed out placeholder to "Create Textbox Style" and it will be active. That is to say, it is contextual, and it only active when the selction contains something that can be defined as a custom style. Which, as you have noted, is very limited in Numbers 3, and probably non-existant within a table.
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Mar 23, 2014 9:18 AMby JohnnyMcC9,I have Numbers 3.1 and I use it. My "comments" are direct observations. That being said:
If you want to call them table styles that is fine. But in Numbers 3.1 when I add a new table, I can click on one cell and in the format pane, under "Text" I get "Table Style 1" and when I click on another cell I get "Table Style 2". Get Numbers 3.1 and try it and then tell me how my comments are incorrect. In Numbers 3.1, if there are styles for tables, they are only in the form of default styles for the cells. Styles are only applied to cells and the prebuilt table designs use different styles for different cells.
I know this is not Apple I'm asking. I just asked "if anyone knows". I did not want to start a debate about how Numbers should or should not work. I posted what I have observed, made an assumption (good or not) that there are unfinished items and wanted to know if anyone had heard if Apple plans on finishing them.
I still welcome any answers from people who use 3.1 and may have used earlier versions if they feel something has been lost in the way of styles.
Thanks,
John
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Mar 23, 2014 9:54 AMby Jerrold Green1,HelpfulJohn,
JohnnyMcC9 wrote:
I selected the text in a cell and I still couldn't "Create Style" from the menu. Can you be maore specific on how you create a style in Numbers 3.1?
Thanks,
John
Sometimes a picture helps. I did my best to locate the Add Style button you were referring to, and this is what I came up with...
As you can see, it's not grayed out. And, it does work. Am I in the wrong area? I'd appreciate it if you would post a screen shot of the area you are looking at.
The TOU for this site is quite specific about allowable content. Speculation is not allowed. Anyone who knows what might be coming, but which is not yet announced, would be further bound by non-disclosure agreements. Also, we try not to get side-tracked by complaints disguised as questions.
Jerry
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Mar 23, 2014 10:15 AMby Jeff Shenk,HelpfulJohn,
I think I see what I was missing; Numbers names the paragraph styles that it includes in a given Table style with the "Table style 1" and so on. Sorry that I thought you were talking about Table styles.
The lack of custom Table styles, which Numbers '09 had, is one of the reasons I stick with that version for real work.
I think Jerry has addressed your issue with paragraph styles: i.e. if you select a paragraph that has been modified form the default style, the plus sign will be active.
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Mar 24, 2014 4:04 AMby JohnnyMcC9,Thanks Jerry,
I see now how to get the plus sign active. Selecting a cell will reveal the currently used paragraph style for that cell, but you have to actually select the text inside the cel to get the plus sign active. The "Create Style" option under Format>Advanced menu is still always "grayed out". It is still confusing what kind of style to which it is referring anyway.
John
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Mar 24, 2014 4:10 AMby JohnnyMcC9,Thanks Jeff,
It is not intuitive what setting or changing a table style does to the properties of each cell. It hard to tell whether a "table style" is a property of a table, or if changing the table style just sets certain properties for the cells in the table. I will have to do more playing to see how table styles behave.
John
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Mar 24, 2014 5:20 AMby Yellowbox,Hi John,
I too am confused about Table Style, Paragraph Style, and whether they refer to the whole table, or just the selected cells or just the text layer within cells.
My transition from Numbers 2.3 to Numbers 3.1 was relatively easy. I had a preferred custom template in Numbers 2.3 which magically appeared in Numbers 3.1 Template Chooser > My Templates. I am finding that many of the "lost" features in Numbers 3.1 can be recovered by formatting a document and its objects in Numbers 2.3. Save, Close, then Open in Numbers 3.1 and Save As Template.
It is amazing how many Numbers 2.3 features are honoured* by Numbers 3.1 in this approach. Margin settings (instead of the Numbers 3.1 fixed one inch margins), custom cell formats, active hyperlinks when exporting as PDF...
* the term 'Honored' (USA English) or 'Honoured' (English English and Australian English) was coined by Shawn L.
I like it.
Further reading:
Features that Apple has promised to reinstate:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6049
Hints on workarounds here:
23622372
What has been GAINED in Numbers 3 is here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5473882?start=75&tstart=0
What has been lost in Numbers 3 is here (with corrections where Apple has already reinstated some lost features in the Numbers 3.1 update):
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5470448?start=240&tstart=0
I don't like the preset tables in Numbers 3.x. I have a custom template in Template Chooser > My Templates that is set to open on launching Numbers or calling File > New.
Numbers > Preferences > General > For New Documents:
Gives me this:
One Header Row, One Header Column, Row Height smaller, 1 pt cell borders, Font to my choice. One drawback: New From Template Chooser for a different template is hidden in the File Menu. I have to hold down the option key to see that menu choice.
Regards,
Ian.
Message was edited by: Yellowbox Spelling corrected to Preferences
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Mar 24, 2014 6:19 AMby Jeff Shenk,Ian,
I haven't dug into it fully, particularly in Numbers 3, and I don't think Apple documents it very well, but basically, each table can have one Table Style and each paragraph can have one Paragraph Style.
A Paragraph Style will include a Character Style (type face, font size, color, baseline shift and so on) as well as paragraph specific attributes like line spacing, indents, alignment and tabs.
A Table Style will specify a set of attributes for header cells, footer cells and body cells (basically a Paragraph Style for the contents plus border styles and background fills). It may also include attributes for the table as a whole (background fill [a texture, for example], drop shadow, etc).
Of course, you can override individual attributes after a style has been applied. For example, after a Table
Style has been applied to a table, you can apply a different Paragraph Style to the contents of a cell (or even to a single paragraph in that cell, if there are more than one).
Jeff
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Feb 24, 2015 3:04 PMby James Kachan,It would seem that there is a bug — either that or I am also doing something wrong, but I can't imagine what that might be.
No matter what I have tried, I can not define a NEW Paragraph Style from a custom formatted table TITLE.
If you're in the Title Field, you can change Paragraph Styles based on the defaults, update the defaults, or make changes to the Title itself, but it seems impossible to then define those changes as a new Paragraph Style.
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Feb 24, 2015 3:08 PMby Wayne Contello,I just did some tests and the "+" does become active in different cases. I would say the Numbers cannot (or does not) allow paragraph styles to be defined when the title of a table is highlighted. Try while you are in text edit mode of a cell (you double clicked the text in the cell) or a text box.
