iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Picking a Numbers Template

As with the other iWork programs, your Numbers journey starts at the Template Chooser. When you launch Numbers or choose File → New to create a new document, the Template Chooser appears and tempts you with a selection of 30 spreadsheet templates (Figure 17-2).

Tip

If you find yourself turning to the same template again and again, you can cut out the Template Chooser by picking a standard template to use every time you open a new document. Go to Numbers → Preferences, click the General button, and then turn on the “Use template” option in the For New Documents section. Click Choose and select your standard template from the Template Chooser. After you do this, you can call up the Template Chooser any time by going to File → “New from Template Chooser”.

Numbers templates play a different role than templates in the other iWork programs. In Pages and Keynote, templates define only the look of your document. While some Pages templates are designed for newsletters or reports, for example, you can fill them with any type of text or images. Numbers templates provide a similarly colorful and elegant selection of templates, but nearly all of them are intended for very specific purposes.

If you want to build an invoice, a workout tracker, a family budget, or a check register, Numbers has you covered with a template for each. Those templates are preloaded not only with a layout of page elements, like all iWork templates, but also with calculations designed to achieve ...