Any "Numbers" users here?

[geekette]

I know little about spreadsheets, and next to nothing about Numbers (Mac).  I'm trying to use their budget template and bend it to my will.

So I have figured out how to change default categories, and have January's info looking pretty, but I'd like to duplicate the Budget and Transaction sheet for the rest of the year (I can only seem to duplicate them fully populated, which is a pain).  I can get around that by deleting all the info, sure, but it seems there should be an easier way, no?

Then I'd really like to be able to have a separate each budget/transaction sheet for each month, and I'd like to carry over +/- by category, for things like planning ahead for taxes or new tires.

Or I could just spring for YNAB...

[arebelspy]

Just gotta throw a plug for my favorite spreadsheet program, LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/

I don't know about Numbers (though I do have it on my iPad, I never use it), or if they have their own proprietary format.  If not, it may be easiest to upload a copy of what you're using (with personal numbers scrubbed) and ask for help with whatever you're trying to do.  :)

[aj_yooper]

I used Numbers budget to get started, but it is not nearly as good as YNAB-not fluid.  Also, YNAB has smart phone apps to track daily spending very easily.  That will carry over your +/- by category by month and give you easy to read reports.  It works for us.  Buy it from a link on a thread and it will be $6 less.  If you buy it, make sure you watch the videos on how to set it up. 

[terarym]

I use it.  I've been recording spending for 20 years and so software evolves as you do.  I find Numbers to be fairly cumbersome.  However, I like recording on the iPad, and it allows for text writing (I record lists of grocery purchases) so I use it and hope that we grow together!

[Metta]

I imported my Excel sheet over to Numbers at the beginning of this year and have begun using Numbers since the Cloud feature means that we can check our budget anytime instead of just weekly.

I initially tried the Numbers Budget template but decided that I really didn't care for it. The way it is set up you would have to have all your transactions on the transactions page (not divided by month) which would not serve my purposes. Alternatively I could have done heavy modification to it but if I'm doing that, I already have a budget spreadsheet that is the result of a decade of loving fixes.

For what you want to do, which is duplicate a page without the values within it isn't really possible from what I can tell. Even doing it in Excel would require some special steps to take with protecting the cells and I don't think Numbers is that sophisticated.

My experience has been that nothing made by someone else will be a perfect solution for you but that you should commit to making a spreadsheet that works for you.

One more thing: my experience leads me to making each month's sheet at the beginning of the month because that way I can make changes to it if I've figured out that something didn't work.

[geekette]

Thinking on this, I have to agree that the budget template is fairly useless, so if I want to do this, I'll need to start from scratch.

I don't actually need most of YNAB's features, nor do I need Number's cloud feature, since I have obsessively tracked everything in Quicken since '92.  This is more of a rainy Sunday learn something new project, and I thought it would be a compact way of seeing our spending, without much fluff.