Numbers vs. Excel

[JSR]

FIGHT!


I'm primarily a Mac user and have been very satisfied doing all my writing in Pages. Love the iCloud syncing between all my devices. I've decided to master a spreadsheet program, and am a bit undecided of what to go for. Numbers seems more streamlined, more elegant and is much lighter program to run. Yet Excel is the heavy industry standard with more features overall. Maybe I should go for both? Anybody got experience with using documents from Numbers in Excel or vice versa?

[Pikate]

In my experience Numbers will open Excel docs perfectly every time and, again as far as I've experienced, Excel for Windows will open Excel documents exported from Numbers (that actually works better than Word documents exported from Pages which I have had issues with). Also I've never found anything Numbers can't do Excel can (at least after a quick Google or a bit of tinkering in the "Inspector" and bear in mind I'm a Medical Student not a Chartered Accountant or anything so you could have issues) if you're happy with Pages over Word though definitely go for Numbers over Excel.

[GluedOnBeard]

As much as I love Apple software I can't go for iWork over Office. In day to day tasks you will run into things that are just stupidly hard to get around with Numbers. They may have improved it since I last used it but checking for duplicates in a column wasn't easy and I think the overall layout and table functions pale in comparison to Excel too.

I also found Excel handled different currencies and larger amounts of data in spreadsheets more effectively.

[EvilBoris]

Why bother learning numbers, it's unlikely you'd go to work somewhere and find out they only use numbers, even if they were using exclusively macs i'm sure it would be excel they had.

[charlesr]

You can do some pretty fancy things in Excel with VBA.
You shouldn't but lots of people do....

[EJG1980]

In day to day tasks you will run into things that are just stupidly hard to get around with Numbers.

This is exactly what annoyed me when I tried Numbers. I was expecting that while it would be less powerful than Excel it would make up for it by being a breeze to use but I find Excel is much easier and more intuitive to work with.

The whole way Numbers is set up just seemed clunky and needlessly fiddly to me. It feels like Apple have tired to take a slightly different approach to spreadsheets just for the sake of being different, rather than for a good reason.

[_SD_]

If there's one thing I have to give Microsoft credit for, it's Office. I did give iWork a trial for a few weeks, but I soon ended up switching back to Office. I've used the Mac version since 2008; I'm currently on 2011 and it's nice to have Outlook back.

[wakka]

Annoyingly MS Office is also a piece of crap on Mac, so you're stuck between a rock and a hard place to a certain extent.

[EJG1980]

Annoyingly MS Office is also a piece of crap on Mac, so you're stuck between a rock and a hard place to a certain extent.

I haven't had any problems at all with the 2011 edition. It starts up quickly and I've never experienced a crash with it. I only use Word and Excel though so couldn't comment on any of the other components.

[GluedOnBeard]

I haven't had any problems at all with the 2011 edition. It starts up quickly and I've never experienced a crash with it. I only use Word and Excel though so couldn't comment on any of the other components.

Yeah prior to 2011 things weren't that great for Office on Mac but the 2011 version is the best suite of apps beside other writing apps from the app store you can get.

[Nijo]

If this is for CV purposes, Excel every time.

At the moment I use OpenOffice, which really sucks in many ways but it gets the basic job done. If I needed to do anything serious I'd get Excel.

[EvilBoris]

I had a look at the MAc version of Office last night!

I love it how they have Mac-ified all the interfaces and icons whilst even the newer versions of Excel on Windows look the same as they always have.
Very strange, does your typical Mac user demand that all software must be cute and fluffy?

[EJG1980]

I've never heard Excel described as cute and fluffy before

Mac:


Windows:


Is there really that much difference?

[Nijo]

The thing I love about the Mac version of anything, is that the green maximise button does not maximise the window, but instead makes it randomly bigger. Or smaller.

It's a resize randomiser.

[QualityChimp]

Heeeeeey!

Is there where the party's at?

*looks around*

Hmmm, wrong thread...