You can open spreadsheets saved on your Mac, in iCloud Drive, on connected servers, and in third-party storage providers. 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 open Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (files with a .xls or .xlsx filename extension), delimited text files, or fixed-width text files into Numbers and make changes to them. For more information, see Import data.
Do any of the following:
Open a spreadsheet on a Mac: For a Numbers spreadsheet, double-click the spreadsheet name or thumbnail, or drag it to the Numbers icon in the Dock or in the Applications folder. For an Excel spreadsheet, drag it to the Numbers icon (double-clicking the file opens Excel if you have that app).
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 (such as iCloud Drive): In Numbers, choose File > Open (from the file menu at the top of your screen). In the dialog, click a location in the sidebar on the left, or click the pop-up menu at the top of the dialog, then choose the location where the spreadsheet is saved. Double-click the spreadsheet to open it.
When you open a spreadsheet that uses fonts not installed on your computer, a missing font notification appears briefly at the top of the spreadsheet. In the notification, click Show and choose a replacement font.
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.
Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Dock.
Click the “Prefer tabs when opening documents” pop-up menu, then choose Always.
This setting applies not just to Numbers, but also to documents in other applications such as TextEdit, Pages, and Keynote.
Close a spreadsheet but keep Numbers open: Click the red close button in the top-left corner of the Numbers window, or press Command-W.
Close the spreadsheet and quit Numbers: Choose Numbers > Quit Numbers (from the Numbers menu at the top of your screen). All of your changes are saved.
Some templates aren’t downloaded to your computer until you choose them or open a spreadsheet that uses one. If your connection is slow or you’re offline when this happens, images in the spreadsheet may appear at a lower resolution until you’re online again or the template finishes downloading.