The new version acts the same way, but gives up – we hope temporarily – useful features like "Print View" which shows the borders of the printed page while you're editing a spreadsheet.
#Numbers for mac review plus
Instead of treating each page of a worksheet as a single grid, optionally with charts floating above the grid, Numbers treated each worksheet page as a canvas that could contain multiple grids, plus graphics, text boxes, media files, and anything else that can fit on a page. When the original version of Numbers appeared in 2007, it was the first spreadsheet to break from the standard graph-paper model used by every other spreadsheet program. This is something to hope for in future versions. Uncharacteristically, Apple didn't use its imagination when adding support for bubble charts, because the same graphic technology could easily have been used to add features that aren't in Excel – for example, by displaying three dimensional data with columns that vary both in height and width, or other graphically innovative ways. (This kind of third dimension, which actually displays data, is of course completely different from the merely decorative "three dimensional" charts that spreadsheet apps have offered for years as ways of jazzing up two dimensional data). A bubble chart is, in effect, a chart with three dimensions of data, with the size of a circular bubble adding a third dimension to the standard two dimensions of the X and Y axis.
Numbers' charting finally includes the bubble charts that Excel has provided for years. Of course, like every other graphic feature in Apple's iWork apps, interactive charting is also available in Keynote, where it can help to clarify and enliven a presentation, and in Pages but you'll probably use it most in Numbers. You can display the same kind of information in a traditional static chart, but the interactive chart can help to clarify data trends and make it easier to focus on, for example, the data in a single year. As you drag the slider – for example, from one year to the next – the chart changes to reflect the data from that year. An interactive chart looks like any other chart, but with a slider at the foot or on the left. The most innovative feature in the new version of Numbers is its interactive charting. If you're looking for a full-featured alternative to Excel, you'll probably prefer to keep the old version, but most home, student, and small business users will find the new Numbers the easiest and most enjoyable spreadsheet program ever written.