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jjk454ss

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jul 10, 2008
4,481
500
I can't find the info to o what I want, probably because I don't really know what to search for on google.

What I have is a spreadsheet with information.

Customer name
Phone
Address
Email
Cost
Description

Basically that's it, info is in cells a1, b1, c1, etc. Next customer is a2, b2, c2, etc.

What. I need to do us export that data into seperatete tabs or pages so I can print off a sheet with each customers info by itself. I can do this in excel, I just don't know Numbers. Can someone point me to a guide to at least get me started?

Thanks
 

jjk454ss

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jul 10, 2008
4,481
500
I have the first customer done. All I need now is the best way to automatically do the rest. I need to print off a separate sheet for each person. I am not sure if a tab for each customer is best, or space them apart all in one tab. But now that I have one done with the info from cells A1, B1, C1, etc, how do I copy that to new tabs with A2, B2, C2, then A3, B3, C3.....

I have just over 50, so its not too many, but I dont want to manually do all 50, I know there is a way to copy the info over and have it go to the next line each time.
 

HexMonkey

Administrator emeritus
Feb 5, 2004
2,240
504
New Zealand
It sounds like you're effectively trying to do a mail merge operation. Assuming you also have Pages, you can set it up to use a Numbers spreadsheet as input and do this fairly easily.

The main steps are:

  1. Make sure the Numbers document has a header row with the names of each field (later referred to as 'Target Name').
  2. Create a document in Pages with whatever layout you'd like for the printed documents. Enter placeholder text for the field values (name, phone, address etc).
  3. In the Inspector, select the Links icon (second from the right), and then the Merge tab. Click the 'Choose...' button and select your Numbers document.
  4. For each field, select the placeholder text, select 'Add Merge Field' from the + menu at the bottom left of the inspector, and make sure the Target Name matches the correct column from the Numbers document.
  5. Select 'Edit > Mail Merge...'. From here you can send the output to a new document or print it straight away. Either way, it will have one page per customer.
 

jjk454ss

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jul 10, 2008
4,481
500
It sounds like you're effectively trying to do a mail merge operation. Assuming you also have Pages, you can set it up to use a Numbers spreadsheet as input and do this fairly easily.

The main steps are:

  1. Make sure the Numbers document has a header row with the names of each field (later referred to as 'Target Name').
  2. Create a document in Pages with whatever layout you'd like for the printed documents. Enter placeholder text for the field values (name, phone, address etc).
  3. In the Inspector, select the Links icon (second from the right), and then the Merge tab. Click the 'Choose...' button and select your Numbers document.
  4. For each field, select the placeholder text, select 'Add Merge Field' from the + menu at the bottom left of the inspector, and make sure the Target Name matches the correct column from the Numbers document.
  5. Select 'Edit > Mail Merge...'. From here you can send the output to a new document or print it straight away. Either way, it will have one page per customer.

Thank you, this sounds like exactly what I am trying to do. Is it possible though to do it all in Numbers? I just like spreadsheets because the cells make it easier for me to layout the information nicer. I know I can make a nice layout in Pages, but thats another thing I need to learn then:). I am off to bed, finally, but I will try what you suggested tomorrow. Unless you have a way to do it all in Numbers. If not then Pages it is:D. Thanks again.
 

HexMonkey

Administrator emeritus
Feb 5, 2004
2,240
504
New Zealand
It might be possible within Numbers, though I'm not sure how, and it probably wouldn't be a very clean solution even if you could as it's not really designed for that kind of thing. What you could try is creating your layout in Numbers, and then copying and pasting it into a Pages document. That will create a table in Pages with the same layout, and you can then use cell contents as the merge fields.
 
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