It is time to move on from Apple’s Numbers spreadsheet. It doesn’t work the way I do, and the frustration factor got a bit too much on New Year’s Day. It was enough that I went back to Google’s Sheets, even though it meant a lot of work to do the re-set.

Over the past few years, I have struggled and endured using Apple’s Numbers spreadsheet. It worked for what I wanted from my running Spreadsheet, well…usually, which was good enough most of the time. I don’t do any fancy formulas or linkages from multiple sheets, so my needs are pretty basic.

Which sucked because I thought that I had my 2022 RunLog spreadsheet all set up and ready to go for the year. However, when I used it live for the first time after Saturday’s run, it screwed up and wouldn’t let me change a column from numbers to duration. 

It didn’t matter what I tried to do; nothing would let me do that simple function. I am not a novice spreadsheet user and have used them since the ’80s. It should take about 3-4 clicks and be done. 

To say that I got a bit frustrated would be an understatement. 

It was one of those ongoing things that happen too often when I attempt to use Numbers. In the past, I would scratch my head far too often when attempting to try something new or add a metric in and work out a way around it. This time I was tired of doing that.

Since I am looking for/at things in my running that I can simplify, I thought about whether I really need to keep using Numbers. I endured its peculiarities because of what…saying that I am using Apple’s stuff. Not in my estimation a good enough reason anymore. 

If I am frustrated this often by Numbers, it is time to move on. 

It is time to use what works for me without worrying about whose label is on the title.

In this case, I am going back to Google Sheets. Yes, I could have gone to Excel, but for what I am using the Spreadsheet for, Sheets is a better fit. I used it when I was a teacher and while working at the University and am relatively proficient in it. Sheets does have its own peculiarities, but at least the basic functions are consistent when you are applying them.

So, I saved my 2022 Numbers Spreadsheet to Excel, then uploaded it to Google Sheets, where it was converted over to Sheets format automatically. It was a convoluted process, but it saved a lot of typing and reinventing the wheel. Then it was a matter of ensuring that all the formulas and stuff worked the way I wanted. Only a few things got overly wonky. Along with cleaning up formatting and some other things that didn’t convert quite the way I expected. It took about two hours of playing around with it and remembering/re-learning the commands and a few things that had been updated/changed.

Finally, I got my 2022 RunLog spreadsheet about where I wanted it. Although, I am sure that I will tweak it to meet whatever new and exciting ideas I have about what I need to track about my running. It looks quite different from my 2021 edition, and the fields are the things I know what I am looking for in the metrics I am tracking now. It is less about the actual daily totals and more about looking at specific trends in my running.

Of course, along the way, I went down into the rabbit hole of looking for my previous years’ RunLog spreadsheets from 2011 to 2021. Finding them all and converting them over to Sheets was an adventure. 

I didn’t realize how many were missing, incomplete and that I needed to figure out where I had squirreled them away inside other spreadsheets or which program I had them saved in. That took another evening of playing around and a bit of muttering to myself as the wife chuckled at me, swearing at the computer.

Am I happy about having to move on from Numbers? Not really, I liked many things about it, but the “little” things like quickly changing the formatting without frig farting around got to be a pain in the arse after a while. 

I wanted something that I am familiar with, works consistently, does the basics easily, and is accessible wherever I am. 

Google Sheets does that for me. 

Now to get Google Drive working with my MacBook Air M1, and that is a different issue I have a feeling. One that is not resolvable at my level that is for sure.