It’s finally happened! I’d almost given up hope of ever seeing the return of Categories to Numbers (they’re now called Smart Categories), but they have made a triumphant return in the latest versions of Numbers, for both the MacOS and iOS versions.
One of the greatest complaints against Numbers as a spreadsheet program to be taken seriously is the lack of Pivot Tables. The Categories feature in Numbers ’09 was not exactly the same as Pivot Tables, but it was close enough, and now it’s back in the latest version, making the transition from iWork 09 much closer to completion. If you’re not familiar with this feature, in a nutshell it provides a similar functionality to sorting, but is much more powerful. You turn Categories on or off with a sinmple toggle, and you can then choose one or more columns as your categories. The data is then instantly sorted based on your choice(s), and you also have the ability to include basic statistics with your categories, such as sum, average, count, etc. You can also hide the data rows from view so all you see are the category headings with their summary data. Very quick, very easy to do, and even fun. You can change your categories on the fly with a single mouse click or finger tap, to produce a completely different story. You can even create a graph of the result. There doesn’t seem to much more to do to bring back all of the great features of the earlier version, and of course, all the brand new features of the modern iWork are there as well, such as editable shapes, collaborative editing, etc. The Numbers update is available for free from the App Store on both MacOS and iOS. Kind regards, Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer Perth, Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 046 948 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to. -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
