iWork ‘08 Numbers Review

Microsoft Excel

Every couple years Microsoft releases a new version of Microsoft Office, but there aren’t any new killer features to get excited about. There hasn’t been a new feature in Excel, Word, or Powerpoint that has got me excited since Office ‘97, that’s 10 years… which is decades in technology years. There has never been anything truly innovative about the Office suite and the only reason I’ve ever upgraded is for compatibility issues because they stop selling/supporting the older editions. I will admit that I haven’t used Excel 2007 but it does look promising.

Apple’s Entry into the Spreadsheet Software Industry

Apple released Numbers as part of iWork 08 recently, and from the first time you load the application you can immediately see the beauty in a spreadsheet program. That’s right, Apple has taken spreadsheets, boring time sheets, budgets, and charts and made them beautiful. The biggest change I see in Numbers is the ability to “float” a number of tables on a single sheet. Possibly the most annoying part of Excel is when you try your spreadsheets look even a little presentable and you have to line up multiple tables in one spreadsheet with the same column widths. Making for unnecessarily wide columns on some tables, while other tables look “all right”.In the last 10 years, Microsoft has not been able to come up with any innovative method of getting around this.

Another yet to be changed feature of Excel in the last couple versions is the charting. I still have to use the same lame old chart templates with no visual appeal. In Numbers, you can select from a large number of chart styles and you can customize each of their 3D representations by playing with the 3D Scene controls in the Chart Inspector allowing you to customize the color and angle of the 3D charts.

Another cool feature in Numbers is the ability to add strokes to shapes, not just typical solid, dotted, and dashed lines, but you can also add really cool outlines like Picture Frames, Tape, a computer Monitor, Thumb Tacks, and more. Combined with the color and gradient fills you can really make your shapes look great!

Who Cares, Spreadsheets Don’t Have To Look Nice

What’s the big deal about being able to make your spreadsheets look so great? Image is everything. When you create a project timeline or GANTT chart for a client, they notice how the documents looks and it reflects on yourself and your business and your professionalism. They won’t be expecting anything special, and 90% of the time will get something boring in Excel, but when you send them a beautifully presented document like you can make in Numbers, they will notice and you’ll get comments on the presentation of your document. Even though that may not directly turn into more dollars for you then, it leaves a great impression and the client will be more comfortable working with you. I have seen proposals from competitors that are just quickly done up in Word with Times New Roman as the font. They don’t even bother to worry about the visual representation of the document. This is a huge mistake, and in a future article I’ll talk about how I put together proposals and some common mistakes made, but you need to stand out from the competition when you are submitting something to the client. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they’ll read everything and be impressed. You need something to catch their attention, and a beautifully designed spreadsheet or document will do just that. Then they’ll be more eager to read your document and actually consider what you’re sending to them.

For more information, take a look at Apple’s iWork Numbers page