Take Control of Numbers

Tackling Text

Numbers are the reason we need spreadsheets, but spreadsheets also need text—for labels, and sometimes for larger blocks of explanatory information.

I don’t cover standard text formatting in Numbers, as it’s basically the same as in other Mac apps (and is covered in Take Control of Pages). But it is important to know how to handle text inside and outside a table, starting with the “text container” concept. Then we can tour the Text Pane, look at Text in Shapes and Text Boxes (a text box is different from a square shape that holds text), explore Bullets and Lists, and, most importantly, learn about Paragraph and Character Styles.

The Text Ruler

I missed this text-formatting feature for a long time, because I seldom have rulers ...