Numbers: One Funny Control
Posted August 23rd, 2008 @ 07:32pm by Erik J. Barzeski
See the two segmented controls in the screenshot of the Numbers inspector? Right there in the "Page Layout" section? SEe 'em?
Thing is, they're not segmented controls. At least, they don't act like 'em. They look like 'em, but they don't quack like them, so they're not ducks.
Instead of clicking on the left or right side, it doesn't matter which side you click on - they'll toggle.
Great job, Apple. 😛
Fortunately, this isn't the biggest problem in Numbers. I spent ten minutes today trying to figure out the whole border system (I've got it now!), and a good 15 minutes trying to figure out how to force Numbers how NOT to use the names of columns in formulas ((=A2+B2 looks so much better than =Blue Team Whispering Woods + Red Team Thunder Hill or whatever I was getting. Ugh.)). Never did get an answer to that one, and every time I'd type the cell coordinates the names would replace the much simpler letter/number pair. 🙁
Oh, and once I merged some cells, I was seemingly unable to split them back into the cells they came from. Numbers kept dividing them in half, despite the fact that I'd originally merged three cells into one.
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Posted 25 Aug 2008 at 8:45pm #
I can see the segment control thing being an intentional feature and not an oops... Little controls are fiddly, ya know? And why not act as a toggle when you only have two choices? But yeah.
Posted 25 Aug 2008 at 9:05pm #
[quote comment="49253"]Little controls are fiddly, ya know?[/quote]
That's a good point. But I dunno… those buttons are much, much bigger than those little arrows in the same pane, or the checkboxes or radio buttons, right?
Posted 25 Aug 2008 at 9:08pm #
True.
But everyone knows clicking on arrows is just something a power-user would do. 😉
Posted 29 Aug 2008 at 7:15pm #
you can turn off 'Use header cell names as references' in the Preferences panel if you prefer 'A2+B2' style
Posted 29 Aug 2008 at 7:40pm #
[quote comment="49321"]you can turn off 'Use header cell names as references' in the Preferences panel if you prefer 'A2+B2' style[/quote]
Yay! I missed that because, IIRC, I remember being so sure that it must a per-document control that I didn't think to look in the application-wide settings
Thanks!!