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Five Problems with the Latest Release of Apple Numbers 4.0 Spreadsheet Software for iOS

Software updates and releases of the popular Apple Numbers spreadsheet software have been plagued with bugs in recent years. Unfortunately, these bugs and broken or missing features, result in a disruption to user workflow and they diminish the trust consumers have in the Apple brand. The bugs also suggest that those developing the software aren’t actually using it. If they were users of the software, they would quickly identify the problems.

Customers with concerns about bugs can report them to Apple using the Numbers for iOS feedback form.

Numbers Version 4.0 Bugs

With the 4.0 version of Numbers released yesterday, some new problems have surfaced, and others previously identified weren’t fixed. Here’s a current list of bugs with items 1-4 shown in the visual below.

  1. When using forms, the title font is made unnecessarily too small when the record numbers increase beyond 999.
  2. It’s no longer possible to add forms. A Google search on this issue reveals that this has been a repeated problem over recent years. The forms feature gets broken or removed. People complain. Then it gets fixed or added back in.
  3. Pressing Tab or Enter should take the user to the next field for data entry. If the next field contains a drop-down menu of items, it is skipped, as well as any other fields, until a text or numerical entry field is found. As a result, the user needs to go back to the previous fields with dropdown and tap on them to enter data.
  4. If a program has a notification message at the top of the screen, this pushes the Numbers app off the screen at the bottom, causing the controls to only partially appear. In other words, the program doesn’t automatically resize based on the available screen space.
  5. Dictation inserts an arbitrary space at the beginning of text.

Problems from Numbers Version 3.2

Some of the bugs identified in Numbers 3.2 (as described in the video below) remained in Numbers 3.3, and continue to exist in Numbers 4.0.

By Greg Johnson

Greg Johnson is a freelance writer and tech consultant in Iowa City. He is also the founder and Director of the ResourcesForLife.com website. Learn more at AboutGregJohnson.com

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