Back with Office

When I got my new laptop in February, I was frustrated because I couldn't find my Office for Mac CD. I had loaded it onto my desktop but could not for the life of me find it again.

So I've been using the Mac iWork suite. Pages, for a word processing program, is just fine. I haven't tried to do anything too complex in it--mail merges or labels or anything. But for writing, it's been no problem. Numbers, on the other hand, drove me absolutely freaking nuts.

I live and die by my spreadsheets.

When I was at the Grand, I created intricate spreadsheets of attendance. I could tell you how many matinee tickets we sold on Tuesdays in 2004. I knew the average concession purchase per patron. Every month I reported to the Board, along with the month financials, a page I called "10 Important Numbers." This was a handy business trick I'd read about somewhere. The idea is that a small data set of numbers and ratios can tell you a lot about the health of a business--if you chose the right numbers.

Now that Mary and I are self-employed, I have not given up on my spreadsheets. In fact, I feel like I spend more time with them. Monthly hours worked, monthly billed, sorted by client, sorted by spreadsheet, graphed in bar charts, line charts, and pie charts.

I know that sounds a little dorky, but it's so helpful for planning and for really knowing how things are going.

Anyway, Numbers was just never up to the task for me, but I've been using it for the last five months. And then! I found the Office CD! Now that I have it back I've converted my Numbers spreadsheets back to Excel.

If there is any Microsoft product I love as much as my Mac stuff, it's Excel. That program rules.