How Do I Download An Excel Spreadsheet To My Ipad
Cherrie Patete
Coming up on 2023, I am looking at possibly switching most of my work to an iPad Pro. I have questions though. A lot of my work consists of editing spreadsheets (adding orders, checking dates, etc). How good is the iPad Pro 12.9" at handling Excel spreadsheets?
If you own an iPad, chances are you're already pretty high on productivity and portability. It's no secret that the ease of use and accessibility of Apple's tablet has led many to ditch their laptops in favor of the device. However, not everyone knows you can also run Microsoft Excel on an iPad. Known as the preeminent spreadsheet application for everyday consumers, Excel is a powerful addition to your iPad-based workflow.
While you can download Excel from the Apple App Store for free, you will need an active Microsoft 365 subscription to create and edit spreadsheets. If you don't have a subscription, you can only view spreadsheets, according to Microsoft.
As with any app that has been re-tooled for use on a tablet, you should expect some minor loss in functionality with Excel as it compares to laptop and desktop-based versions. However, the iPad version still holds up for many spreadsheet tasks while edging out the competition regarding portability.
Once you've got your Excel app installed, you are ready to go. However, to replicate the functionality you're used to with the desktop-based version of Excel, make sure you use a mouse and keyboard with your iPad. These external devices will allow you to utilize features like keyboard shortcuts and cursor accuracy when editing spreadsheets.
While Numbers is a great free alternative to Excel for the iPad, it is worth noting that you can still open and view spreadsheets for free using the official Excel app without a Microsoft 365 subscription.
I am having an issue saving excel onto my dropbox folder from an iPad. I cannot duplicate this issue on my computer though. I run into the issue when trying to save an excel for iPad file into a folder. I get the error message: "That file name won't work because it includes invalid characters or it's too long. Please try a different name". I have tried multiples of different names and it still will not work. I find it odd that this is only an issue from the iPad and that I have saved an identical length name 20 minutes before this issue from the iPad. There is no issue uploading the excel sheet into the same folder with the same name from my Mac.
Actually, the limits for the iCloud versions of the apps are different than for the 64-bit iOS or OS X versions, since the iCloud apps are optimized for use in a web browser. OS X and iOS numbers/pages/keynote files have no inherent limit on maximum file size other than available RAM. Since most recent iPads other than the 12.9" Pro only have 2GB RAM, iOS numbers does not handle very large spreadsheets well at all.
And excel data has to be converted to tables in numbers canvas since unlike excel, numbers is not a single monolithic spreadsheet structure. So a very large single sheet in excel (which excel just sees as a single x by y spreadsheet) may get split into many smaller tables in numbers since tables in numbers are strictly limited to the range of the data they actually contain. That canvas approach in numbers allows for some massive files, but it creates problems when converting from excel since their architecture is so different.
An ipad is inherently going to struggle with converting a really large, and/or really complex excel file. Even my 12.9" iPad Pro (which reportedly has 4GB RAM) doesn't do that sort of thing well (I often work with csv files or excel files well in excess of 50MB - those will not convert to numbers on an iPad but will open, at least, in MS excel on the iPad).
Numbers starts you off with a blank canvas instead of an endless grid, so you have the freedom to move everything around your canvas at will and organize your data any way you choose. And everyone editing the spreadsheet has access to the same powerful features on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Teaming up with someone who uses Microsoft Excel? Numbers makes it a great working relationship. You can save Numbers spreadsheets as Excel files. Or import and edit Excel spreadsheets right in Numbers.
To create or edit spreadsheets on the iPad, you need a spreadsheet editing app. Here you have a few choices, including Numbers for iPad, which is owned and distributed by Apple; Documents To Go; the Google Sheets app, which is part of Google Drive; and Microsoft Excel for iPad, which requires an Office 365 subscription. There are also many other solid choices from third-party providers. The cost of an app is determined by the app you choose.
Many apps are free, but some apps with more features cost more up front. Even so, such apps may be limited in that they may not be able to display all the elements from an original Excel spreadsheet, or they may lose data and formatting in translation from the computer software to the iPad app.
It can also be more comfortable to view a spreadsheet on an iPad rather than a computer, especially if you prefer to do your viewing while relaxing on a comfortable couch, as opposed to sitting rigidly upright in front of a computer screen with Excel for Mac or Excel in Office 365.
There are a few drawbacks that come with using spreadsheet apps for the iPad. Most businesses use Excel as their spreadsheet application. The Numbers app is capable of importing spreadsheets with either Excel and Numbers formatting. However, it may not keep all the formatting information from an Excel spreadsheet.
Numbers comes with the Apple ecosystem and is free for every Apple device manufactured from 2014 onward. Numbers specializes in spreadsheets and comes with many different templates for spreadsheets as well as the ability to save spreadsheet documents and export them in the Microsoft Excel format. It also allows you to sync your data across all your Apple devices using iCloud. That way your spreadsheet is always up-to-date no matter what device you open it on.
With Documents to Go you get plenty of functionality, including the ability to view, edit and store spreadsheets and many other types of documents as well. There are two versions of Documents to Go: the standard version and the premium version. The standard version allows you to edit word documents and spreadsheets. With the premium version, you can also edit PowerPoint documents and sync them with your iCloud, SugarSync, Google Drive and Box.net accounts. When it comes to functionality, Documents to Go blows a lot of other apps out of the water.
Microsoft released a version of Excel on the iPad that allows you to open spreadsheets in the Excel format and view them. You cannot, however, create these documents or edit them without an Office 365 subscription. Once you pay for the subscription, you can access all the functionality you have with the full version of Microsoft Excel.
One feature that many spreadsheet apps use to differentiate themselves from the competition is the cloud-sharing option. Using this option, you can access your documents, edit them, save them and share them, all within the cloud using such services as Box, Dropbox and Google Drive, among others.
Many spreadsheet applications, including MS Excel, do offer the ability to lock individual cells. But those applications produce documents consisting of a single large table, on which every cell in the document must be placed.
And, no, password protection for that locking is not available. That was also true in iWork's predecessor, AppleWorks. Like the iWork applications, AppleWorks offered password protection at the document level, but not for anything short of that. AppleWorks's spreadsheet module, which used the large, single table model, did offer the ability to lock single cells or groups of cells (but not to assign a password to that lock/unlock operation).
And, as an aside, "Apple's Excel for Mac" is emphatically not among the spreadsheets that "have the ability to lock cells." There's a very simple reason for that: Applications that don't exist can't have that (or any) ability, and "Apple's Excel for Mac" does not exist. Excel for Mac is a Microsoft application that runs on the Mac platform.
Comments show up in the document like all other versions of Excel, and the app will send you a push notification when comments come in. These comments of course sync across all devices accessing your spreadsheet.
It's been two years since Microsoft launched Excel for iPad, and while it may have seemed like a slightly foolhardy move at the time, Apple's tablets have proved themselves to be more than capable of handling complex spreadsheet manipulation. Despite lacking a full keyboard and mouse interface, Excel for iPad is very nearly the equal of its desktop counterpart.
In addition to a larger screen surface to work across, the addition of the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard means that users can have much more delicate control of their spreadsheets, without worrying about deleting something vital with one ham-fisted swipe.
Excel for iPad can be too powerful for its own good. If you're working on a spreadsheet created on a PC/Mac that has tons of formulae, pivot tables or other complex formatting, it's possible to accidentally clear the contents of a critical cell or drag a table out of place as you're swiping around the document.
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