Appleworks Links to outside documents

[Dave00]

Perhaps I am the last person on earth to use appleworks, but anyway, I am trying to create a spreadsheet that references values in another spreadsheet. I'd like to have cells in a master spreadsheet that change when cells in another document change. For instance, suppose I have spreadsheet A that has at the end, Total Widget Sold for 1st Quarter, and spreadsheet B that has at the end, Total Widgets for 2nd Quarter, I want to have spreadsheet C total the values from Spreadsheet A&B.

I've done this before with excel, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do it with appleworks.

Perhaps I need to move to another spreadsheet program, but I'd really rather sell my soul to the devil than install Microsoft Office on my mac.

Dave

 

[MisterMe]

This is not what AppleWorks is intended to do. Excel may not include the kitchen sink, but it does have a dishwasher. The AppleWorks spreadsheet component is pretty much limited to knives and forks.

 

[Makosuke]

AppleWorks, not going to do it.

If you don't want to sit down with the Devil (though to be honest, I think Excel is the only good product MS has produced unless you count IE5 for the Mac way back when it was new), how about NeoOffice?

It's ugly, but its spreadsheet component allows for links to external data sources, so will probably do what you want. And heck, it's free, so you're not out anything if it doesn't do what you want.

 

[Dave00]

Well, I thought perhaps this was the case (Appleworks not supporting outside links.) Oh well. I guess I can wait for apple's spreadsheet app, wait for the open source solutions to become more robust, or (gasp) install excel or microsoft office. Last time I installed (years ago) a version of office, it slowed my whole machine down, even when it wasn't running. This was when it had that annoying "Clippy" that popped up all the time. I can't imagine it's become any more efficient since then... has it?

Dave

 

[Makosuke]

Well, Office 2004 isn't a total abomination (that helper thingy isn't so viciously annoying, anyway)--certainly a HUGE step up from any of the anti-productivity monstrosities before Office 98, and I'd say better than any of the interim versions, too.

Have you actually tried NeoOffice? It's just getting to Beta, but the spreadsheet component seems quite robust, though admittedly I haven't used it heavily. It's free, so surely it's worth at least a few minutes of time to check out before you spend hundreds of dollars on Office.