With Numbers you can open spreadsheets saved on your Mac, in iCloud Drive, on connected servers, and in third-party storage providers such as Dropbox. If you can’t open a Numbers spreadsheet, make sure that you have the latest version of Numbers from the Mac App Store. If a spreadsheet is dimmed and can’t be selected, it means the spreadsheet can’t be opened by Numbers.
You can also import a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (with the .xls or .xlsx filename extension) into Numbers and make changes to it.
Do any of the following:
Open a spreadsheet on a Mac: Double-click the spreadsheet name or thumbnail, or drag it to the Numbers icon in the Dock or in the Applications folder.
Open a spreadsheet you recently worked on: In Numbers, choose File > Open Recent (from the File menu at the top of your screen). Numbers shows up to the last ten spreadsheets you opened. Choose one to open it.
Open a spreadsheet stored somewhere other than your Mac (like Dropbox or iCloud Drive): In Numbers, choose File > Open. Click the pop-up menu at the top of the window that appears, then choose the location where the spreadsheet is saved. Locate and double-click the spreadsheet.
To look for spreadsheets in places that don’t appear in the pop-up menu, you can click locations in the sidebar on the left side of the Open dialog. Use the buttons at the top to change your view.
Tip: You can have more than one Numbers spreadsheet open at a time. When you work in multiple spreadsheets, it’s helpful to open them in tabs rather than in separate windows—that way, you can move between them by clicking the tabs in the tab bar. To have Numbers spreadsheets (and all other documents) open in tabs, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Dock. Click the “Prefer tabs when opening documents” pop-up menu, then choose Always.
When you open a spreadsheet that uses fonts not installed on your computer, a missing font alert appears briefly at the top of the spreadsheet. In the alert, click Show and choose a replacement font.