iWork: The Missing Manual

Chapter 18. Organizing Tables in Numbers

Now that you can spin your way across tables faster than a can-can dancer, you’ve got all the know-how you need to fill up your grids with data. But all that info is useful only if you can pluck it back out again, and that’s where a little organization goes a long way. Once you’ve got your data loaded into a table, it’s time to massage it into shape—structuring it, sorting it, searching it, and filtering it. This chapter shows you all the ways that Numbers can help you tidy your tables and find the right info at the right time.

This organizational effort is about more than shuffling data, though: A pristine table also looks clean, and this chapter shows you how to make your data more accessible (and your tables prettier) with the judicious application of borders and background fills. Once you’ve transformed your gray numbers into shapely figures, Numbers makes it easy to perform the same makeover miracle again and again by storing styles. Before you dig into this interior decoration, though, you’ll learn about organizing the structure of your table, starting with rows and columns.

Working with Rows and Columns

Filling table cells quickly is all well and good—after all, that’s how you’ll spend most of your time as you work with your spreadsheet. But while cells may be where you actually sling your data, it’s the rows and columns that hold the whole thing together and keep your info organized. Good row and column management makes for good table ...