The Ridiculously Simple Guide To Numbers For Mac

Introduction

Microsoft Excel used to rule them all. It didn’t matter what computer or operating system you had—if you needed to create a spreadsheet, you used Excel.

Times have changed! Today, there are many spreadsheet solutions out there. Some, like Google Sheets, are pretty barebones; and others, like Excel, feel at times feature creep—there are just so many options, it’s easy to get lost. If you use a Mac, iPad, or iPhone, then you have a third option that’s growing in popularity: Numbers.

In addition to being simple, yet visually stunning, Numbers comes free with Apple devices. What’s even better is it’s pretty easy to get started, even with limited knowledge of the software.

If you really want to get the most out of it, then this guide will help. It will show you the ropes—including how to do all those things you are used to doing in Microsoft Excel - and help you with some of the features you may not even know about.

Ready to get started? Let’s go!

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The Basics

How To Get Numbers

Depending on how you acquired your Mac, you may or may not have Numbers already. Getting it is easy. And even better: getting it is free! (You can see if you have it by going into the Launchpad from the dock and searching for Numbers).



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There’s one catch: not all Macs are supported. But most are. MacOS 10.14 is required to run Numbers, which means you must have one of the following computers:

MacBook: Early 2015 or newer

MacBook Air: Mid 2012 or newer

MacBook Pro: Mid 2012 or newer

Mac Mini: Late 2012 or newer

iMac: Late 2012 or newer

iMac Pro

Mac Pro: Late 2013 or newer; Mid 2010 or Mid 2012 models require a Metal-capable GPU

As long as you have one of those, then you can go to the App Store (it’s in your Launchpad). Numbers is a digital download only—you cannot obtain a physical copy of it. The download is a few hundred MB.

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From there, type in Numbers in the search bar, and hit the return key.



If you have it, the return result will have an Open button; if you don’t have it, the result will show a Get button. When you click Get, you’ll be prompted to put in your Apple ID and password; if you don’t have an Apple ID, then follow the onscreen instructions to get one (this is free).



Running Numbers for the First Time

When you first open Numbers, you'll be asked if you want to use iCloud. I recommend you do; this makes it easy to save and open documents across all devices—if you are writing a document on