Hello everyone, just a quick post tonight, since I am up to my ears trying to deal with Numbers time formats. I’m working on a time sheet template, and the thing is giving me fits. I suppose I should be thankful for all the posting material this is giving me.
Anyway, I picked up tonight’s tip from the Apple Numbers Discussion Forums. There seems to be an undocumented keyboard shortcut: Option-Return. This allows you to quickly edit an existing formula in a cell. I find it to be roughly equivalent to the F2 shortcut in Excel.
You can also use Option-Return to insert a hard break when editing text in a cell (this is in the documentation).
I found this in posts from both Mathias Rempe and JaxJason, I’m not sure who found it first. Regardless, good job guys.
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While we are on the subject of keyboard shortcuts, I found an error in the documentation that is accessible from Help > Keyboard Shortcuts.
The documentation reads:
Stop editing cell and select cell  –> Command-Return
— then later —
Stop editing cells and select the table –> Command-Return
The second option is correct, the first option should read:
Stop editing cell and select cell –>Â Escape
If you combine this with our undocumented shortcut, you will be able to move into and out of cells quickly.
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Thnks for the credit. Never thought I would see my ‘name’ on other websites. Cool.
I suggest anyone wanting to learn more about any of apple’s programs or OSX itself, take a gander in the support discussions, even if you don’t have a specific question, you willalways learn something. I do every day I look.
Thanks again,
Jason
jaxjason,
Thank you for sharing your time and experience on the Apple board!
I find useful information there all the time, and try to give it a little wider audience through this site (of course giving credit where it is due).
Keep up the good work!
- Michael
So how’s the time sheet template coming along? Is it project-based?
Anthony,
How’s the time sheet coming? Slow!
Numbers has some strange ways of dealing with time, that are just straight forward in Excel. I think I know how to fix it, but I was sidetracked by other projects. I hope to get a credit card math template out today, then a mortgage refinance calculator on Saturday. After those are finished, that time sheet is next in the cue.
The time sheet, as it currently exists, is just a simple weekly table with a break for lunch. I don’t have a problem with doing multiple versions, so if you have something in Excel, or a link to what you are looking for, e-mail it to me at contact [at] numberstemplates.com
- Michael
Thanks for the tip. I was going nuts trying to figure this out. I was F2 all the time in Excel at work and this ‘unpublished’ shortcut really helps.
Just want to add my thanks for this shortcut—the lack of F2 support was driving me nuts. This is close enough, though I wish, instead of selecting all text in the cell, it would default to placing the cursor at the end.
Thanks a lot! was driving me nuts as well =D
Hi, Michael, did you ever finish this template?
awesome! thanks.