We have two big announcements: First, after two years, we are closing down the Numbers Templates Forums. Second, we are starting a new site called AppleInquiry.com, which will serve as the new home for the content generated on the forum.

We have many reasons for doing this. Chiefly, we believe that the software behind AppleInquiry.com (the same that runs the sites StackOverflow.com and SuperUser.com) is vastly superior for quickly finding answers to questions. Second, users earn reputation points as they ask and answer questions, which allows for additional site privileges as you earn points (e.g., the ability to comment on questions, or edit tags).

Also, we wanted to expand the scope of the discussion beyond Numbers into all things Apple. For example, if you are running Numbers and have questions, you probably have questions about the rest of the iWork suite, or iLife, or OS X. See the point?

AppleInquiry.com uses openid for logins, so your personal data will also be more-secure (we will be deleting our forum user database after the site transition is complete).

How does this differ from the discussion boards at Apple? It differs precisely because the Apple boards are forums. This means that the replies to any question are set out chronologically with no weight given to a particular response. With AppleInquiry.com users can vote up answers that they feel best answer the question. This allows the “wisdom of crowds” effect to kick in, resulting in the most-relevant answers rising to the top.

All content on AppleInquiry.com is licensed under the cc-wiki with attribution required license. This means anybody can use the content for any purpose as long as they link back to the source, and license their adaptations under a similar license. This also means the content can never be locked behind a “pay wall”.

Another awesome feature is the ability to subscribe to rss feeds for individual tags. So, if you wanted to follow all questions and answers related to Numbers, you could subscribe to this Numbers Tag RSS feed in your favorite reader. Also, you can choose to be emailed when someone answers one of your questions. Great, great, stuff.

What is the goal?

The ultimate goal of AppleInquiry.com is to become the first place users go to answer their Apple related questions; a Wikipedia for Apple questions if you will. In order to achieve this goal, we need your help. A site like this can only catch on with an active community. We hope that users will both find, and contribute useful content.

It is perfectly acceptable to use the site like a notebook. By that, we mean that you can answer your own questions if you feel that the knowledge you are posting would be something you may wish to refer back to quickly, and is something that you feel other users may find useful. Joel Spolsky describes it thusly, “You can find out about bread on the internet, but there should be an entry for bread in Wikipedia. That’s the purpose of an encyclopedia.”

One last caveat: The software that runs the software is currently in beta, so there could be some quirky issues at the start. Rest assured however, that these issues will subside. The software is being developed by Fog Creek Software, which has a reputation for hiring great developers and creating quality products.

We took two steps today to fix the spam posts on the forums:

1. Implemented re-captcha on new user signups to combat the spam bots.

2. Required moderation on new threads in the Question and Answers section, which seemed to be the main target of the spammers.

I think this should greatly reduce our spam issues, and make the forums a more-useful tool.

Update: The forums are permanently offline.

The forums are finally back up.

They were down due to spammers. Sorry for the delay.

Forum member Allmec has posted a cool example of how to create waterfall charts in Numbers.

You can check out his post on the Numbers Template Forums.

I had a great surprise when I checked the Numbers Templates Forums this afternoon after stuffing myself with entirely too much food.  Forum member 5|=vv had posted a neat Numbers spreadsheet that had graphical breakdown of the days in November on which Thanksgiving fallen since 1939.

[Note: This blog has a fair number of international visitors. Â My hope is that you have a similar holiday in which you can spend time with family and friends, and throw the diet out the window for the day.]Â

Â

 In addition to being a nice touch for the US holiday, it shows off Numbers ability to imbed images in, and behind other objects.  The ability to perform these powerful layout techniques is something that really sets Numbers apart from “other” spreadsheet software.

The author,  5|=vv, in addition to being a regular poster on our forums, also contributes a ton of information and advice on the Apple Numbers discussion boards.

You can find the Thanksgiving spreadsheet here.Â

Forum member, JaxJason, is working on a short format book/tutorial on Numbers. To quote from Jason’s first post on the project:

Ok, here is my first attempt at a little book to help people pick up Numbers. It is written in a conversational tone. It is purposefully not written with perfect grammar. Please be gentle with comments, I am an engineer, not an english major.

I have really enjoyed reading what Jason has produced thus far. As he stated, each chapter is written in easy to understand language, and include many screen shots.

Here are the areas covered to date, and a screen shot from the chapter pdf:

Chapter 1:

• Introduction to Numbers (This familiarizes the user with layout and controls in Numbers)

Chapter 2:

• Tables and formatting (This is an introduction to one of the key features that make Numbers unique)

Chapter 3:

• Graphics (This is a great introduction to the graphics tools in Numbers)

Chapter 4:

• Charts (Introduction to the charting tools in Numbers)

I’m not sure what else Jason has planned for the series, but I look forward to reading Chapter 5.

You can download the chapters with the following links (the first is a direct link to the files, the second is a link the original forum post for each chapter):

Files:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Tables
Chapter 3: Graphics
Chapter 4: Charts

Forum Posts:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Tables
Chapter 3: Graphics
Chapter 4: Charts

Please leave any questions or feedback for Jason in the Numbers Templates Forums.

Forum maestro, JaxJason, posted this cool little converter spreadsheet back in September. At first blush, there isn’t a lot going on with this. The first sheet presents just one table, with two drop down boxes: one for choosing the unit measurement you would like to convert to, the second to choose the unit of measurement you would like to convert to. The user then inputs a value under the from column, and the sheet calculates the value. Very useful.

The best part of this sheet for me though, was the explanation of how it works that Jason includes on the second sheet. He puts everything out in the open and provides detailed notes on the implementation.

As with most things in life, getting good at spreadsheets requires both tinkering with your own projects and studying the work of experts. If I were going to sit down and write this myself, I might have never thought about the methods Jason uses. That’s why his taking the extra effort to detail how he does it makes this so much more valuable. Jason has the heart of a teacher, and it shows.

Jason, thanks again for your work.

Download the converter file in the forums.

Note: Since this file was posted in the forums, please direct all questions and comments there.

Forum member and Numbers guru, JaxJason, has posted a workaround for the lack of Solver support in Numbers. Jason can explain it better than I can, so here is his quote from the forum:

This one is a solver workaround that uses a second table with about 1000 rows to perform a series of iterations. using the difference between the goal your looking for and the results of the last solution from the line above.

I will leave it for you to work and play with instead of giving a full rundown here. I basically just played with the iteration formulas till I found a nice medium that gave me nice results within 1000 rows.

You can change the yellow boxes. It is shooting to set the final principal amount in the second column, to get the payment in that column to the amount you asked for in the yellow payment box.

Hope this helps some people understand how Numbers works. I just liked that I got it to work.

Jason

Great work Jason!

Note: I am disabling comments on this post since any questions or suggestions should be directed to the Solver workaround thread.

Forum member Yogimartin has posted his personal finance template on the forums. It is very detailed, and weighs in at a whopping 3.9 MB unzipped. **Fair warning: you need a fast Mac to run this.**

It allows the user to track their checking, savings, credit cards, investments and real estate by month. All of the monthly data is consolidated in two report sheets. This is a big upgrade for anyone looking for more firepower than our Checking Account Register.

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Edit 12/16/2008: The file is no longer available on the forums, so here is a direct link: Apple Numbers Personal Finance Template. I again warn you that this file is very large and may run slowly on some macs.
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You can read Yogimartin’s post on the forums.

As always, we invite you to join the discussions.

Forum member Ashka shared a good tip on the forums yesterday dealing with Merging and Splitting cells. Basically, there is a bug in how Numbers handles split cells that were merged from an odd number of cells. This is Ashka’s work around:

Merging two cells then splitting them works fine, as does any even number merged. Merging three cells then trying to split them makes a mess as the split command only splits the merged cells in half. Select the odd number merge, add another cell and merge together giving an even number merge. Then split in half as often as necessary.

Thanks Ashka, for your contribution.

Edit 9/27/2007: Ashka pointed out this is the forums today:

Jonfen from Canada mentioned the fact that all the columns had to be the same size for the unmerge / split to work correctly. I’d expect the same would be true for rows also.

Do you want to contribute your tip? Join in the discussions on the forums!