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Many things that Numbers seems to me to be better than Excel from a formatting perspective:

* Freeze header rows & columns.

* Naming header rows & columns.

* Graphs that don't overlap the sheet.

Things that I find Excel does better than Numbers from a data perspective:

* Data validation

* Large tables

* Formula Error checking




You can freeze header rows in Excel. This happens automatically if you use Insert -> Table. That also gets you the ability to name columns.


Excel tables are so amazing. They solve so many problems.


good to learn. I've only ever seen people do panes in a very poor imitation.


"Excel" is just one specific spreadsheet application out of several.

But anyway...

* You can freeze header rows and columns in Excel.

* You can place charts outside the sheet with data.

* I'm not even 100% sure you can't name columns, but let's say you can't.

So, Excel has 2 out of its 3 "missing features". Just saying.


Excel has been able to name columns for years.


They've always done a horrible job of hiding the dialog for managing named ranges. Easy to create them but knowing where they are is a PITA.


you mean the enormous drop-down on the left at the top? Where it shows the current cell, and you can type to replace the value with a name?


There's another dialog to modify, rename, and delete ranges.


Exporting all sheets as individual csvs in one go…

Recently I’ve just been using numbers because it’s there on the odd occasions I need to access an xslx file and, while everything is a little different, it’s just better.




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