MacBook® All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Creating Spreadsheets with Numbers

In This Chapter

• Opening, saving, and creating spreadsheets

• Selecting cells

• Entering and editing cell data

• Formatting cells

• Adding and removing rows and columns

• Creating simple calculations

• Adding charts to your spreadsheets

• Printing a Numbers spreadsheet

Are you downright afraid of spreadsheets? Does the idea of building a budget with charts and all sorts of fancy graphics send you running for the safety of the hall closet? Well, good MacBook owner, Apple has once again taken something that everyone else considers super-complex and turned it into something that normal human beings can use! (Much as Apple did with video editing, songwriting, and Web site creation — heck, is there any type of software that Apple designers can't make intuitive and easy to use?)

In this chapter, I get to demonstrate how Numbers can help you organize data, analyze important financial decisions, and yes, even maintain a household budget! You'll soon see why the Numbers spreadsheet program is specifically designed with the home Mac owner in mind.

Before We Launch Numbers ...

Just in case you're not familiar with applications like Numbers and Microsoft Excel — and the documents they create — let me provide you with a little background information.

A spreadsheet organizes and calculates numbers by using a grid system of rows and columns. The intersection of each row and column is a cell, and cells can hold either text or numeric values (along with calculations that are usually ...