I just found this great formatting tip over on the Apple Numbers discussion boards. A poster had the following problem:

He had a series of phone numbers formatted as 10 digits (i.e. 5035551212). He wanted to re-format the numbers to read as (503) 555-1212.

5|=vv (who is also a frequent poster on our forums) provided the answer – with a little help from WWJD.

The solution is the following formula:

=”(“&LEFT(A2,3)&”) “&MID(A2,4,3)&”-”&RIGHT(A2,4)

Where cell A2 is the value to be converted.

Let’s analyze the formula in three steps (as in the screen shot above, our value in cell A2 is 3349967444):

1) =”(“&LEFT(A2,3)&”)”

First, the = sign is used to let Numbers know that this is a formula. Then, “(“, inserts an open parentheses, it is enclosed in quotes to indicate to Numbers that it is text. Next, an Ampersand (&) is used as a shortcut for the CONCATENATE function. This function allows the user to link together text and function results into a string.

The next portion is LEFT(A2,3). The LEFT function retrieves a specified number of characters from the left end of a string. The format is LEFT(text, [length]). In this case the formula is referencing cell A2, and counting 3 spaces over. The value returned is 334.

Finally, the CONCATENATE function is used again, to link “) ” to the string. Notice that there is a space intentionally inserted after the close parenthesis, before the closing quote. The result of these operations is: (334) .

2) &MID(A2,4,3)&”-”

The next portion of the formula uses the MID function. The MID function extracts a specified number of characters from a string starting at a specified position. The format is MID(text, start, length). In the formula above, cell A2 contains the text, the starting position is 4, and the length is 3. How did 5|=vv know to use 4 as the starting position? He had already extracted the first 3 characters with the first portion of the formula (with the LEFT function), so to continue, he started with the next position in the string, 4. We need the need the next 3 numbers, so the length is 3.

Again the CONCATENATE shortcut (&) is used to join a hyphen to the string “-”. This section of the formula gives us: 996-. When we put this together with the results of the first formula, we get: (334) 996-. Almost there!

3) &RIGHT(A2,4)

If you have made it this far, you can probably infer what this last function does. The RIGHT function extracts a specified number of characters from the right end of a string. The format is RIGHT(text, [length]). Again, our text is in cell A2, and since we only need the last four characters of the string, the length is 4.

In our example above, the formula returns 7444.

Putting all three sections together, we get (334) 996-7444, which is the exact format that we desired.

Thanks 5|=vv.

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The compound annual growth rate measures the growth rate of an investment as if it grew at a steady rate over time.

For example, a savings account that pays a 3.00% APY will grow at three percent, year after year, until the bank changes the rate. Therefore, the CAGR on the savings account would be 3.00%. Simple. But, what if you bought a stock for $10 per share three years ago, and it is now worth $15. What is your gain? 50% right? 15-10/10 = .5. The 50% is your overall gain, but your money was tied up for 3 years. What was your annual rate of return. You can use CAGR to calculate to calculate this.

For this example we will have three inputs: beginning-value, ending-value, and number-of-years.

The formula for calculating CAGR is:
=((ending-value/beginning-value)^(1/number-of-years))-1

If you plug in our numbers from the stock example, $10 growing to $15, over a three year period, gives you a 14.47% compounded annual return. You could then use this number to compare your return to what the broad market averages returned during the same time frame.