With Microsoft Excel now adapted specifically for smartphones and tablets, Excel will continue to dominate the spreadsheet market. All three Microsoft apps (Excel, PowerPoint and Word) shot to number one in the App Store, taking away Numbers’ competitive edge. New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, announced shortly after his appointment earlier this year that Microsoft was in plans to move popular Microsoft Office programs Excel, PowerPoint and Word to an app-based format. The lack of mobile presence was Microsoft Excel’s only downfall. However, Apple’s Numbers saw larger growth with the introduction of their mobile app on their popular iPhone and iPad range in 2013, allowing users to collaborate on their spreadsheet documents across a variety of their Apple platforms. Numbers has always been second to Microsoft Excel, with Microsoft appealing to a wide range of users through their Microsoft Office package, which has more programs with more features for business and home users compared to Apple’s iWork alternative. While Excel has more built-in functions, on the whole, only users who employ very advanced analytical techniques would miss these missing functions in Numbers.
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Numbers consequently lacks some of the more advanced formulas and functions of Excel, such as pivot tables. Numbers makes it much easier to create spreadsheets with visual impact compared to Excel, with also the option of a wider variety of templates available when the program is first opened – a feature that lacks in Excel.įor overall functionality, Microsoft Excel has a multitude of pre-loaded formulas and functions. However, Apple’s charts are more visually stimulating (as seen below). Excel supports advanced charting and plotting features not available in Apple Numbers. Overall Excel provides an overwhelming amount of functions in comparison to Apple’s Numbers, but it can be argued that they both appeal to different spreadsheet users.
#EXCEL ON WINDOWS VS MAC FOR MAC#
Apple Numbers was specifically made for Mac users, whereas Microsoft Excel functions on both Mac and Windows computers. Before any comparison can be made between the two spreadsheet programs, it must be first considered which computer they are being accessed from. Microsoft Excel has 400 functions in 11 categories compared to Apple’s Numbers possessing only 262 functions in 10 categories (categories for both spreadsheet programs include date/time, text, statistical, financial and engineering, etc.). In 2007 Apple released Numbers 1.0, adding to the growing rivalry between the two technology giants. There are now a variety of spreadsheets available, with Microsoft’s Excel leading the market share with over 750 million users worldwide.