Numbers error on import Excel (.xls) document

Question

Simple formulas appear to fail on import from Excel simply because the number of rows in the spreadsheet is truncated by content.
For example: =SUM(E7:E65536) will fail in many cases because there aren't 65536 rows in the table. Shortening this maxiumum fixes the error, but is time consuming because the formulas are only visible by temporary warning notices and must be retyped. I wish these formulas could be kept as errors rather than being moved into warnings.
I've read the documentation but can't see how to bundle the built-in functions to look for all the rows without specifying a specific range. Does anyone know how to set a wildcard maximum to table rows or columns instead of a number like 65536?

Answer 1

Numbers isn't designed with the 16th century, monolithic ledger (or infinite grid of cells) in mind. Related sets of data are meant to be grouped in individual tables, with only the number of rows necessary to contain your data (blank cells can work, but should be accounted for in more complicated formulas using the "if" suffixed functions). With formulas acting on that data (with the exception of simple summary functions like you describe) contained in separate tables.
In this case, your formula would be:
=SUM(Table 1::E), if the summation formula is in a different table
or
=SUM(E), if it is in the same table - like in a footer row. No accounting for row count necessary.
Where "Table 1" is the name of the table that contains the data ("Table #" being the default) and "E" the name of the column (unless you add a header row then it is the name of the column). This way rows can be added or deleted at will without disrupting any of your formulas and will always include all of the cells in any number of rows in that column. Any numbers in the header and footer rows won't be included in the summation.
Because Numbers and Excel have fundamentally different views of how the data in spreadsheets should be arranged, straight imports from Excel or attempting to force Numbers to work exactly like Excel won't always make sense.
Ends up sounding more complicated than it is.