How do I use tabular old-style numerals in Numbers?

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Level 1

14 points

How do I use tabular old-style numerals in Numbers?

I know there are fonts installed that have different versions of numerals in them, but Numbers defaults to proportional old-style if the default numerals version that comes with a font is old-style.

Is there any way to use tabular (not proportional) old-style numerals on Numbers at all?

Is it possible to choose a different version of numerals that come with a font, from inside Numbers 4? If not, is there any font available anywhere that has tabular old-style numerals as its default so I can use it in Numbers 4?

This is what I'm talking about:

This is why it's important:

(images from fontfeed.com)

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.5)

Posted on Jul 3, 2017 9:10 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

exizldelfuego

Level 1

4 points

Dec 28, 2017 6:57 PM in response to SGIII

Point taken, thanks for the suggestion.

Embarrassingly enough, I figured out how to do it almost immediately after posting the above.

Select a cell or range of cells
Type Command-T to bring up the Fonts dialog
Select the gear in the top-left of the window and go down to Typography
Select “Number Spacing” in the following window
Select Monospaced Numbers

I’m embarrassed I’d forgotten how to get there. The above works for me using Gotham. Haven’t re-acquainted myself with the other options yet, so I’m not sure how fully featured it is.

Update: I’m running Numbers 4.3.1 on macOS 10.13.2.

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Answer 2

zdlo Author

Level 1

14 points

Jul 8, 2017 12:07 PM in response to SGIII

I have even more fixed-width fonts installed, but non of them have old-type numerals as their default.

If there was such fixed-width font available anywhere, I could install it, and use it. So far, I haven't been able to find any font that comes with tabular old-style numerals as its default version for numerals. There are several fonts that come with it as an option, but those are not selectable from within Numbers 4, as far as I know.

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Answer 3

Dec 28, 2017 6:34 PM in response to zdlo

Hmph. No response to this, I take it? I, too, can’t figure out how to use tabular numerals in Numbers; assuming the support just isn’t there now. Perhaps it’s sacrificed for cross-platform macOS/iOS/iCloud functionality? Or maybe because it just hasn’t made Apple’s list of things to do?

In either case, I’d strongly recommend this being an added feature. We get so many more nice things in Numbers vs Excel and I’d love this to be one of them. I’m sure advanced typographic features are used by a single-digit percentage of iWorks users, but they speak to Apple’s aspiration of being at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.

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Answer 4

Dec 28, 2017 6:55 PM in response to Wayne Contello

Monaco is certainly nice enough for lots of tasks—and thanks for the recommendation!—but lots of companies have style guides for what typefaces get used where. We’ve always got apps like Adobe InDesign to fall back on if we’re not able to do what we need in other apps, but that’s overkill and a real PITA. Really happy to see that Numbers actually does support advanced typographic features.

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Answer 5

Barry

Level 9

59,951 points

Dec 29, 2017 6:46 PM in response to exizldelfuego

"Embarrassingly enough, I figured out how to do it almost immediately after posting the above."

Then there's people like me who've been around long enough to take it for granted that even a proportional font uses monospaced numerals. and were surprised by the question itself!

Thanks for doing the exploration!

Regards,

Barry

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