Ipad Pro Excel

An Excel worksheet wouldn’t be worth very much without any data. You can’t start analyzing, poking, and prodding data on your iPad until you enter the numbers. These pages explain how to enter, select, and edit data. They also show how to delete, copy, and move data on a worksheet. Entering data in a cell. If you look at Microsoft Word on your iPad or iPad Pro, you’ll see that it still looks the same as you are used to seeing, and you can still perform the regular functions you use Word for. The new handwriting addition is in the top navigation bar under the tab labeled Draw.

If you frequently use Excel to create and edit spreadsheets on your Mac, you may want to access the same files while you’re on the go with just your iPad. Although Microsoft hasn’t released an iOS version of Excel, you can still work with Excel files on your iPad if you’re willing to accept a few compromises.

View Excel files on your iPad

If you only need to view Microsoft Excel documents, you’re in luck; Apple’s iOS can display them natively. All you need to do is get the spreadsheets onto your iPad—for example, email them to yourself as attachments, or use an app designed for transferring and viewing documents, such as Avatron Software’s $10 Air Sharing, Good.iWare’s $5 GoodReader for iPad (), or Readdle’s $5 ReaddleDocs for iPad ().

Editing your spreadsheets is not quite as simple. Although several apps and methods exist, none of them has all of Excel’s features. As a result, you’ll face one or more limitations—for example, loss of formatting or a poor touch-screen interface.

Edit Excel spreadsheets with Apple’s Numbers

One natural option for editing Excel spreadsheets is Apple’s Numbers ($10, ). It can import and export documents in Microsoft Excel format, and offers a powerful and easy-to-use environment for creating and editing files.

As long as you’re running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, using the latest version of Numbers for Mac and iOS, and have an Apple iCloud account, transferring documents between a given app on your Mac(s) and iOS device(s) is simple thanks to iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud feature.

Unfortunately, when you import a file in Microsoft Excel format (.xls or .xlsx) or export a Numbers file in an Excel format, you permanently lose essential formatting, tracked changes, comments, and other file attributes. So, if you’re content to keep your Excel spreadsheets in Numbers format once they’re imported—or give up any unsupported formatting—Numbers is arguably your best choice. But if maintaining fidelity with original formatting is your top priority when working with Excel documents on an iPad, you’ll want to look for another solution.

Edit Excel spreadsheets with Google Docs

Another approach is to rely on Google Docs, Google’s free Web-based office suite. Many businesses have standardized on Google Docs because it’s a convenient platform that requires no software beyond a Web browser, provides automatic backups and versioning, and makes sharing files with co-workers easy. All of this would seem to be a natural fit for the iPad, too.

Unfortunately, it isn’t a perfect fit. Although you can upload nearly any format file to Google Docs, if you want to edit spreadsheets online, you must let Google Docs convert them to its own format; as with Numbers, that may entail a considerable loss of formatting—and in cases where formulas differ between Excel and Google Spreadsheets, calculations may change.

Moreover, editing spreadsheets once they’re converted is problematic. With the mobile version of Google Spreadsheets (the default view on an iPad), you can do only the basics—edit cell values, add rows, and change sort orders. But if you switch to the desktop-style Spreadsheet View, you’ll find many of the controls inoperable, and even something as ordinary as selecting a range of cells might prove impossible. The latest version of Nikita Lutsenko’s $4 GoDocs, which offers editing and offline storage of Google Docs, lets you switch more easily between Google’s mobile and desktop views, but because it uses a built-in browser for editing spreadsheets online, its editing capabilities have the same limitations as in Safari.

Try editing with an Office suite

Other good options exist, however, even for Excel spreadsheets uploaded to your Google Docs account. You can still have an excellent editing experience on an iPad by using the native editors built into any of numerous other iPad apps that connect directly to Google Docs.

All five of the following all-in-one office suites for the iPad include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. They all can edit documents from Microsoft Excel and offer direct ties to a variety of cloud-based services, including Google Docs and Dropbox, making it easy to get documents in and out. The spreadsheet components of all the apps let you adjust font, size, style, text color, background color, alignment, and number formatting. They include a wide range of built-in functions and let you resize columns and rows (although not always in the most obvious way). But there also are significant differences between them.

Documents To Go Premium DataViz’s $17 Documents To Go Premium () is an all-in-one office suite for the iPad, with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. It has a functional but unexceptional spreadsheet capability, and it doesn’t take good advantage of the iPad’s touch interface. The app does allow you to search and sort your data, but can’t display charts, has no support for cell borders, and can’t merge cells. (However, any of those attributes present when the file was imported are preserved when you save the file.) Although it lets you import a spreadsheet that contains unsupported functions, it makes the file read-only.

Office² HD Byte Squared’s $8 Office² HD () has a broad set of spreadsheet features as well as a nicely designed interface. It supports sorting your data, and unlike Documents to Go Premium, also lets you merge cells, change borders, and search. But there’s one potentially serious drawback: Although most imported document features are preserved when you save an imported worksheet, charts are not. Note that the developer also sells the $6 Sheet² HD, an app with the same spreadsheet features but without word processing or presentations.

Polaris Office Infraware’s $13 Polaris Office makes good use of the iPad’s touch interface, has a respectable chart-creation tool, and also supports adding images and adjusting cell borders. It offers find and replace, merging, sorting, filtering, and a helpful Freeze Frame feature, which locks header columns and rows so you can scroll within a spreadsheet without losing your place.

Quickoffice Pro HD Quickoffice’s $20 Quickoffice Pro HD () offers easier selection and editing than most other apps covered here and includes a find-and-replace feature. Charts from imported spreadsheets, although not displayed in the app, are preserved when you save. Other than that, though, Quickoffice has a fairly basic feature set—for example, no cell borders, merging, or sorting.

Smart Office 2 Picsel’s $10 Smart Office 2 has a somewhat awkward user interface even for simple actions such as inserting functions, and its performance can be sluggish. Like Quickoffice Pro HD, it lacks support for cell borders, merging, and sorting. It has a find feature but no replace. On the other hand, even though it can’t add new charts, it does display charts from imported spreadsheets—and even updates them correctly as the data changes.

Opt for a spreadsheet-only editing

Beyond these all-in-one office apps, I should mention one other iPad apps that edits spreadsheets specifically (but not Word or PowerPoint documents). Mariner Software’s $6 Mariner Calc for iPad has a solid array of spreadsheet features and can read and write Excel files (.xls only, not .xlsx). However, it doesn’t connect to cloud-based services for transferring files or preserve all formatting when saving imported spreadsheets.

Pick your tool

If you need to edit Excel spreads documents on an iPad, first consider whether they’ll need to travel back and forth between your iPad and Microsoft Excel. If not, Apple’s Numbers will likely give you the best experience. When you do need to preserve full Office compatibility, Office HD is your best choice, as long as you don’t need to import documents containing charts. If creating (or preserving) charts is essential, I’d give the nod to Polaris Office. There’s still one more option to consider, though, running the Windows version of Office on your iPad remotely.

Senior contributor Joe Kissell is the senior editor of TidBits and the author of the ebook Take Control of Working with Your iPad, Second Edition (TidBITS Publishing, 2011).

You can convert and open spreadsheets in Numbers on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or online at iCloud.com.

Convert and open spreadsheets in Numbers on iPhone or iPad

You can work with a variety of file formats in Numbers on your iPhone or iPad. Check which formats are compatible with Numbers on iPhone and iPad.

Convert a Numbers spreadsheet in Numbers on iPhone or iPad

If you want to open a Numbers spreadsheet in another app like Microsoft Excel, use Numbers to convert the spreadsheet into the appropriate format.

In Numbers, open the spreadsheet that you want to convert, then tap the More button .
Tap Export.
Choose a format for your spreadsheet. For example, to open your Numbers spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, choose Excel.
Choose any additional options in the window that appears. For example, when exporting to Excel you can choose whether to create a worksheet for each table or for each sheet. If you create a separate worksheet for each table, you can choose whether to include a summary worksheet with links to all the tables.
Choose how you want to send your spreadsheet, like with Mail or Messages.

Open a file in Numbers on your iPhone or iPad

To open a file like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on your iPhone or iPad, tap the file in the spreadsheet manager. If you don’t see the spreadsheet manager, tap the Back button (on an iPhone or iPod touch) or Spreadsheets (on an iPad), then tap the file that you want to open. If a file is dimmed, it’s not in a compatible format.

You can also open a file in Numbers from a different app like the Files app, or from an email:

Open the other app, then select the spreadsheet or attachment.
Tap the Share button .
Tap Copy to Numbers. The original file remains intact.

After the file opens, you might get a message that the file was last edited in an app other than the most recent version of Numbers. Tap Done to open the file in Numbers.

Convert and open spreadsheets in Numbers for Mac

You can work with a variety of file formats in Numbers for Mac. Check which formats are compatible with Numbers for Mac.

Convert a Numbers spreadsheet in Numbers for Mac

If you want to open a Numbers spreadsheet in another app like Microsoft Excel, use Numbers to convert the spreadsheet to an appropriate format.

In Numbers, open the Numbers spreadsheet that you want to convert.
Choose File > Export To, then select the format.
In the window that appears, you can choose a different format or set up any additional options. For example, you can require a password to open an exported PDF, or choose the format for an exported Excel spreadsheet.
Click Next.
Enter a name for your file and select a folder to save it to.
Click Export.

To send a file in a specific format through Mail, Messages, AirDrop, or Notes, choose Share > Send a Copy, choose how you want to send the spreadsheet, then choose a format.

Open a file in Numbers for Mac

You can open a file from the Finder or from the Numbers app:

From the Finder, Control-click the file, then choose Open With > Numbers. If Numbers is the only spreadsheet app on your Mac, you can just double-click the file.
From the Numbers for Mac app, choose File > Open, select the file, then click Open. If a file is dimmed, it’s not in a compatible format.

When the file opens, you might get a message that the spreadsheet will look different. For example, Numbers notifies you when fonts are missing. You might see also see warnings when you open spreadsheets created in older versions of Numbers.

Convert and open spreadsheets in Numbers for iCloud

Numbers for iCloud lets you open, edit, and share your files from a supported browser on a Mac or PC. Check which formats are compatible with Numbers for iCloud.

Convert a Numbers spreadsheet in Numbers for iCloud

Sign in to iCloud.com with your Apple ID.
Click Numbers.
In the spreadsheet manager, click the More button on the file you want to convert, then choose Download a Copy. If you have the spreadsheet open, click the Tools button in the toolbar, then choose Download a Copy.
Choose a format for the spreadsheet. The file begins to download to your browser’s download location.

Open a file in Numbers for iCloud

Sign in to iCloud.com with your Apple ID.
Click Numbers.
Drag the file you want to upload into the spreadsheet manager in your browser. Or click the Upload button , select the file, then click Choose.
Double-click the file in the spreadsheet manager.

Check file format compatibility

Formats you can open in Numbers

You can open these file formats in Numbers on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and online at iCloud.com:

All Numbers versions
Microsoft Excel: Office Open XML (.xlsx) and Office 97 or later (.xls)
Comma Separated Values (.csv)
Tab-delimited or fixed-width text files

Formats you can convert Numbers spreadsheets into

Ipad Pro Excel Escape Key

Numbers on iPhone or iPad:

Microsoft Excel Office Open XML (.xlsx)
PDF
Comma Separated Values (.csv)
Tab Separated Values (.tsv)

Ipad Pro Excel Macros

Numbers for Mac:

Numbers ’09
Microsoft Excel: Office Open XML (.xlsx) and Office 97 or later (.xls)
PDF
Comma Separated Values (.csv)
Tab Separated Values (.tsv)

Numbers for iCloud:

Ipad Pro Excel And Word

Microsoft Excel Office Open XML (.xlsx)
PDF
Comma Separated Values (.csv)

Learn more

Ipad Pro Excel Tutorial

Numbers on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and online at iCloud.com use the same file format. If you create or edit a spreadsheet in Numbers on one platform, you can open it in Numbers on any of the other platforms.
You can update to current versions of Numbers on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from the App Store. To update Numbers for Mac, use the App Store app on your Mac.
If you convert a Numbers spreadsheet into Numbers ’09-compatible spreadsheet, learn more about changes that happen when you export to iWork ’09.