iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Organizing Your Data with Sheets

Once you start adding more tables to your spreadsheet, the sheet canvas can get crowded fast. To keep things clear and your message focused, you can organize your tables, charts, and other data into multiple sheets. Like adding a new slide to a Keynote slideshow, a new sheet gives you a fresh slate to display and work with your data. From its name, you might think that a sheet is a single page, but that’s not the case; when you print it, a sheet can span several pages. A sheet is more like a chapter than a page, a way to organize your data around distinct themes for your spreadsheet’s presentation:

• A company’s financial statement might have separate sheets for the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow.

• A lab report might have a summary sheet graphing the results of an experiment, with subsequent sheets displaying the raw data.

• The organizer for a Little League coach might include the team roster and contact info on the first sheet, the team schedule on the second, a summary of players’ hitting stats on the third, and the detailed data for all at-bats on the fourth.

• Your personal spreadsheet for contact info might divide contacts into separate sheets for business, friends, and family.

To add a new sheet, click the Sheet button in the toolbar or choose Insert → Sheet, and Numbers gives you a clean sheet with a single table. The sheets are listed in the Sheets pane along with all their tables and charts, as shown in Figure 17-14. When you add a ...