Convert excel to numbers including formulas

I'd just start with launching Numbers and in the menu going to File > Open and then navigating to the Excel document and opening it.

Numbers does a pretty decent of job of importing, including most formulas. Any formulas that Numbers does not support will be flagged.

If you need help converting any of those to "Numbers friendly" equivalents just post here in these support communities.

SG

Hi Brendalee,

Start by using ONLY functions and formula types in Excel that are also supported in Numbers.

Then ensure that those functions and formulas are supported in the same manner in both applications.

The conversion is don when opening the file with Numbers,

Any formula in the Excel workbook that is not a supported feature in Numbers is dumped, and replaced with the last calculated result of that formula.

If you want an exact duplicate of the Excel workbook on your Ma, your best choice could be using MS Excel (for Windows) running on Windows running in Parallels on a Boot Camp partition on your Mac.

Next best would be one of:

MS Office 365, the online version of the Office applications. I don't know which features of the Windows version of Excel are supported and which are missing from the Ofice 365 version of Excel, though. And there is the issue of it being a subscription service, as opposed to a 'buy the license, and use it 'forever' (or until the hardware no longer supports that version model ties out), which is available for single-user for MS Offie Mac.

OR MS Excel for Mac, running in macOS. Most Excel/Windows functions would be supported, but you'd be missing anything depending on Visual Basic, and the macro support that is part of Windows.

Or use one of the open source applications, OpenOffice, NeoOffice (if currently available) or LibreOffice. These have been written to more closely resemble Excel (and the other Office applications) in there behaviour. Of the three, Libre appears to have the most active development schedule, Adding .org to the names of the others will give you the URL for their websites where you can check for yourself, and download that application.

Regards,

Barry

brendalee123 wrote:

Thank you for the reply and help, just so I understand, when I exported the excel file it did not copy over any of the formulas but it will if I do a search for it while in numbers?

You don't "export" the Excel file. You simply go to Numbers and File > Open an Excel file. Numbers should automatically bring over most (often all) of the formulas from the original Excel document.

SG

I don't know exactly how to export from Excel, other than Save As and use a different format, but unless the format has the name "Excel" somewhere in it, the export/save is only saving the most recent values in the cells. No formulas are saved, just the most recent results.

As has already been said, you need to open Numbers and import (Open) the actual Excel file to get it to create to a Numbers file from it, complete with all compatible formulas. Incompatible formulas will get imported as the most recent values; not as formulas.

Hi brendalee,

Compatibility between Numbers and Excel

https://www.apple.com/mac/numbers/compatibility/

What formulas do not convert when you import an Excel document into Numbers?

Regards,

Ian.