I am working in numbers but cannot 'group' or 'ungroup' several columns due to the icons being greyed out - any help appreciated
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
you can merge and undergo columns (or cells).
you can lock a table
you can group objects.
if you have merged columns, rows or cells, then you can undergo them by selecting the cells you want to undergo, then use the menu item "Table > Unmerge"
Thanks for the reply, Its not a merge I want to do - I want to be able to group several columns together (could do this in excel through group and then you could select the columns to ungroup) I have found the icons for group and ungroup but they are greyed out which means I cannot use them - do you know how to make these two icons live?
thanks
The group and ungroup menu items apply only to (graphic) objects.
What is the purpose of "grouping" columns when you do that in Excel? Perhaps a similar purpose can be served in Numbers using a different means.
Regards,
Barry
Hi Barry
in excel its an easy way of hiding and unhiding columns I have a spreadsheet which has 20 columns and I need to double check the figures in columns 3 and 17/18 are all adding up by hiding the columns I don't need, it was just a case of grouping columns to be hidden in excel then you can click to open and shut instead of hiding and unhiding on the iMac - it still works like this but its a lot slower because I have to select and deselect the columns everytime I want to do it. thanks for your reply. If you know of a quicker way please let me know - I am struggling a bit with numbers because I was so proficient in excel when doing my husbands accounts.
best wishes
Hi Lorna,
So in this case you would want to hide columns 4-16?
Unfortunately, Numbers doesn't provide a simple way to repeatedly filter a table by the same set of columns.
Do you need to edit the displayed columns while the others are hidden? If not, you might try using a second table to display the values from selected columns. This could be set up as a continuous display of a fixed set of columns or (as shown below) as a display of values from selected columns only.
The formula below the tables is entered in Cell A2 of Summary, then filled right and down to all other body cells in the table. The IFERROR part wrapped around the base formula is needed only if you'll want to display a varying number of columns from the Main table. It's purpose is to suppress the error triangles that would be displayed in column A, where the formula has not been provided a search term in the first row.
Base formula: A2: =INDEX(Main::$A$1:$Q$10,ROW(),MATCH(A$1,Main::$1:$1,matching-method))
With IFERROR: A2: IFERROR(INDEX(Main::$A$1:$Q$10,ROW(),MATCH(A$1,Main::$1:$1,matching-method)),"" )
Regards,
Barry
how to unlock group in numbers
