Cannot get an invoice created with IWork Numbers to open correctly in Excel

Question

I used the Template in Numbers to create an invoice,and it's great.
However, I cannot seem to open this file in Excel no matter how I send it, no matter how I save it.
Have saved as windows friendly, have saved as Excel file.
I have to be able to have these opened by others with Excel and/or OpenOffice and, Office staff must be able to work with the file to update/modify invoices.
I even tried Pdf and Adobe Acrobat Pro thinking they would be able to do data entry that way-No luck.
Desperately need a solution or a year of working with IWork is going to be lost.
We have now added staff, and in other locations, and have to be able to work across platforms.
No problems importing Office files of any type, but have to be able to export as well and have cells and formatting remain workable.
I can open the files in Excel but they are unusable, in several pages, basically no invoice template left.
Thanks for any help.
Charles1

Answer 1

If you are getting three Excel worksheets, the export is working as designed. You have to remember that the heart of an Excel worksheet is a monolithic table. Everything is aligned in a tabular grid. Numbers, on the other hand, allows you to have multiple tables on the same sheet that have different column and row widths and the tables can be placed wherever you like, offset from the other tables by whatever amount you desire in any direction you desire. The invoice template is a good example; the two tables are very dissimilar in format and in column widths. If Numbers was to export the two tables from the invoice template into a single sheet of an Excel workbook, which column widths would it use? The ones from the first table or the ones from the second? No matter which it chose, the result would be quite different from what is in Numbers. Now include some text boxes, graphics or charts. With the tables moved around and resized to align to the Excel grid, these other items would also have to be moved around. But to where. It would be impossible to make an exported file look anything like it did in Numbers except in specific instances. This is why Numbers creates separate Excel sheets when it converts to Excel.
I know that diatribe did not help you solve your problem. To solve your problem, everything must be designed as one table in Numbers. Here is how you can do it. It is a bunch of steps but is really simple to do.
1) Select all the rows from the first table.
2) Drag them sideways out of the table and drag them to the second table, inserting them just below the first row. I think this is explained in the Numbers User's Guide.
3) Add a new row below the rows you just inserted (this will become your new row 8)
4) Select the cells in row 1. Copy. Paste to your new row 8.
5) Delete row 1
6) Go to the Table Inspector and turn on Name (check the checkbox). Name it Invoice.
7) Back at the table, deselect the table if it is still showing the column letters and row numbers in order to see the table name
8) Click twice on the table name above the table to select it. It will box it in, it does not select the text.
9) On the toolbar, change the font size and color and set it to left justification.
10) Delete the textbox with the word "Invoice" in it.
11) Delete the textbox with "sincerely yours ... Your name". Or, if you want to keep it, add another footer to the table, increase the height of that new footer and type "Sincerely yours," and your name in there. Note that you use option-return to create the linefeeds in the cell.
12) Select the table and slide it up toward the top of the sheet.
13) Adjust the column widths as best you can. I increased the column width of column B and right justified the text in cells A1-A6 and C1-C6 to get it looking okay. You might, instead, choose to insert a column or two and merge some cells together to align everything like you want it. And you might choose to add a row or increase the gridline width between the top half and the bottom half. I did not do those last few things. You can play around to get the design you like best.
The export looked almost exactly like the Numbers document.
Message was edited by: Badunit