Numbers

2.0 stars

"nice, but unable to handle large spreadsheets"

April 6, 2010  |   By mavfan2

Version: Numbers 1.0

Pros

nice interface, easy to use

Cons

Unable to handle large spreadsheets. No toolbar across the top of the screen. No letters above the columns or numbers on the rows.

Summary

Should be called Numbers Lite (and Numbers itself is sort of Excel Lite to start with if you're a power user of spreadsheets).. Numbers chokes on larger spreadsheets. I started with a spreadsheet that is relatively small to me (20,000 lines and 30 columns) and when attempting to open it a few minutes would pass and I would receive a message that my sheet had "too many cells". I then started cutting down the size and retrying to open progressively smaller and smaller spreadsheets but even at 10,000 lines and less than 25 columns Numbers chokes and gives the "too many cells" message. I cannot find where Apple provides information on how many cells Numbers can handle.

I was able to open a 2500 line and 20 column xls spreadsheet in Numbers after about a 30 second wait. Scrolling was acceptable though far from smooth. Selecting one cell and then tapping on another to select it would sometimes result in a 3 second wait for the new cell to be highlighted. Resizing columns or rows would result in a lag of a second or two as well. Enough to make you wonder if you'd done it right.

These problems with Numbers occur whether I used xls or Numbers files generated on a macbook pro with both excel and Numbers installed. The fact that my year old Dell Mini 10 can open a huge spreadsheet in a few seconds while other apps are running has me wondering why the iPad struggles, and often fails, to open much smaller spreadsheets. Perhaps Apple has placed constraints on the processor to save power?

I wasn't expecting to be able to create pivot tables from 60,0000 row, 240 column spreadsheets like I can in Excel on a desktop but I did think I could sort and edit large spreadsheets for work and that just isn't a pleasant experience with Numbers.

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