Comments on: Macintosh iWork ’08 Numbers is a Real Pain

By: Ozonator

Ozonator — Mon, 31 May 2010 05:38:46 +0000

Appleworks was easy to use chart and make labels. Charting in iWork’08 is more torture than going into the Apple Store on a hot day in Baton Rouge with the doors open while a children’s day care center uses the stuff for new toys.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:57:50 +0000

fired up numbers today to plot 2 series on a single graph. 30 minutes later and i still can’t get it to work.

By: Eric Huckvale

Eric Huckvale — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:07:03 +0000

I’ve had iWorks for 2 years. Pages is great, but everytime I’ve tried to use Numbers, the experience is so frustrating that I end up going back to Excel or Appleworks. The app seems to be more concerned with final presentation than ease of use.

By: Steve D

Steve D — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:15:30 +0000

I had the exact same problem with poor usability and high CPU utilization with charts. I solved it, in my case, by adding a new Sheet to the document, and moving the chart to that sheet. In my case, I can accept having the chart separated from the data. YMMV. Cheers.

By: Geo D

Geo D — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:47:27 +0000

+1 to most of the comments above, except that of Joe F. I love the Mac & OS X, but iWork is awfully eccentric and peculiar in its limitations. It’s very frustrating to try to get anything significant done in the application.

Reminds me of those primitive apps that almost worked in the early days of CPM and later MS-DOS. They would do some things, but not a whole set of things so that you could really get work done. Hacking an overlay file so that I could print a document to an Epson dot-matrix in CPM WordStar is not one of my most pleasant memories. Hmm…that’s nearly 30 years ago now…still waiting for this industry to mature….

It seems that we have taken several steps backwards with iWork and with MS Office 2007 and 2008 in terms of usability. Go figure…

By: Dawn C

Dawn C — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:24:31 +0000

I found this forum when looking for some answers to the problems I am having with Numbers. I admit I am used to excel, but I still expect to be able to do ordinary things without undue problems.

Problem 1 – Adding a Title that required more than one line.

Problem 2 – Naming axes

Problem 3 – The most irritating – I can work around the others – pasting into Pages so that it looks the same as I have arranged it in Numbers. E.g; I have a key which sits along side the graph. it can be moved in Numbers and placed wherever I want it. I can also then copy and paste that graph within Numbers and it is fine. When I paste it to Pages it places the key below the graph and I can’t move it, or separate it from the graph. Ungroup is not available.

By: claire

claire — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:24:25 +0000

I am trying to make a graph in numbers-I have done one and don’t have a clue how I did it. Any new graphs I try and make just won’t insert any data. I use a multitude of different spreadsheet software every day with no problems but this version is terrible.

By: Aaron N

Aaron N — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:18:19 +0000

Also, working with graphs in Pages is very easy!! Strange but true. I experienced zero drain on the CPU and I was able to make them look great. The best part….changing labels is easy. Adding text boxes is also very easy. Pages is the experience one would expect to have with a Mac product. Numbers is a moral draining waste of money.

By: Aaron N

Aaron N — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:08:03 +0000

I’ve been using iWork 08 for a while now. No real problems until I went to create a graph in Numbers. This has got to be the worst experience I have ever had with a mac. Why can’t I input my own values on the axis? Seriously, this is the worst application I have ever seen. Why can’t I add a series, or do a bar graph and a line graph together? Why did I have to pay money for this? Not cool, not cool at all….

By: Joe F

Joe F — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:49:50 +0000

I don’t know what most of you are talking about.

If it takes over a minute to change data in a cell, then there is something wrong with your Mac (hardware wise). I’ve designed complex multi-table models in Numbers with no speed issues.

Page-breaks in Numbers? That is not the way one is supposed to think about page composition in Numbers. If you start your page design in print view mode, then you will be able to present your data however you like. Remember, you are working with individual tables that float on the page, not a giant table that gets split-up amongst pages.

The charting is easy, if you work with the software, rather than against it. Data should be organized in a separate table, with header cells (as suggested earlier by Tim), then the chart created from that. X-axis labels will work just fine. The data in the table can be referenced from another table, so as not to have to input redundant data.

You cannot use Numbers to its fullest if you are THINKING in MS Excel — You will only get very frustrated. This application works quite differently than Excel does. I recommend to any veterans of Excel, that they disconnect, and read the tutorials, help screens and watch the demo’s at Apple’s website : http://www.apple.com/iwork/numbers/

I do suggest that Apple increases the feature set in the future, to offer some of the more advanced aspects of Excel (macro’s, protection, external data queries). But for now, it is a supremely refreshing and welcome edition to the world of spreadsheet applications.