Help with Lists and Tables on Mac and PC

[David_Bartoletti]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I use Office2007 on PC desktop and am a new Mac user (MacBookPro/OSX10.5.6/Office:Mac2008-12.1.5). I have a bunch of really simple Excel spreadsheets with contact lists, nothing else, really baby stuff like 10 rows of 3 cols: Name, City, State...you know, the kinda stuff we've been putting in spreadsheets since they were invented ?

Here's what happens:
1. Start in Excel 2007 on PC, create table for sortable columns, save as .xls or .xlsx, and can share with Excel 2003 users. Great. Although 2003 Lists became 2007 Tables, tables saved as .xls retain sortable headers when opened in 2003.
2. Open in Excel:mac 2008, it's just a data range again.
3. OK, so Excel:mac08 has lists, but not tables, so I tried building a new sheet on the mac, applying list, and opening that on PC. Nope, nada.

Do I have this right? Lists in PC2003 became Tables in PC2007 and Lists in MAC2003 became a new version of Lists in MAC2008 and ALL 3 versions of Lists are different from one another AND from Tables? If this is the case, my jaw is on the floor. I can understand adding new formatting and control options with new versions and that's terrific, but to implement something as simple as sorting with completely incompatible code each time? Boy, I hope I'm wrong.

If I can get Office:mac2004, will it recognize a List from a PC 2003 file as a list?

Thanks for any guidance!

.. Regardless of version, neither/none are compatible between platforms? Am I doing something stupid?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

. Regardless of version, neither/none are compatible between platforms? Am I
doing something stupid?

No, you're not.

The List Manager was created and first implemented in MacXL.

When the next version of WinXL came out, it copied the meme, but in a
way that was incompatible with MacXL's Lists.

Now XL07 has come out with Tables. They're not compatible with MacXL
Lists either.

AFAIK, XL04 and XL08 lists are entirely compatible. However, I don't use
them (nor WInXL's lists) except for occasional troubleshooting, so I
can't be 100% sure.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I use Office2007 on PC desktop and am a new Mac user (MacBookPro/OSX10.5.6/Office:Mac2008-12.1.5). I have a bunch of really simple Excel spreadsheets with contact lists, nothing else, really baby stuff like 10 rows of 3 cols: Name, City, State...you know, the kinda stuff we've been putting in spreadsheets since they were invented ?

Here's what happens:
1. Start in Excel 2007 on PC, create table for sortable columns, save as .xls or .xlsx, and can share with Excel 2003 users. Great. Although 2003 Lists became 2007 Tables, tables saved as .xls retain sortable headers when opened in 2003.
2. Open in Excel:mac 2008, it's just a data range again.
3. OK, so Excel:mac08 has lists, but not tables, so I tried building a new sheet on the mac, applying list, and opening that on PC. Nope, nada.

Do I have this right? Lists in PC2003 became Tables in PC2007 and Lists in MAC2003 became a new version of Lists in MAC2008 and ALL 3 versions of Lists are different from one another AND from Tables? If this is the case, my jaw is on the floor. I can understand adding new formatting and control options with new versions and that's terrific, but to implement something as simple as sorting with completely incompatible code each time? Boy, I hope I'm wrong.

If I can get Office:mac2004, will it recognize a List from a PC 2003 file as a list?

Thanks for any guidance!

. Regardless of version, neither/none are compatible between platforms? Am I doing something stupid?

Hi David,

I love Excel's list feature and think it's one of the best features of
Excel. John McGimpsey is correct when he says that the list feature is a
Mac-first feature. It was not ported completely or correctly into
Windows Excel. Your observations are a direct consequence of the sloppy
implementation of the List object in Windows Excel.

A major flaw of XL2007 is that it has only partial support for the List
object. As you noticed, it does not properly save a list object, nor
does it display list objects correctly in files that contain them.

XL2004 and XL2008 on the Mac have full List object support. It's best to
think of the List feature as Mac-first, and still Mac-only.

XL2004 and XL2008 do not support text styles, so you loose the pretty
shading you see in XL2007 when you open an XL2007 table in Mac Excel. In
XL2007 use the Format feature to control borders and shading if you want
to make cross-platform tables that look alike on both platforms.

XL2003 has better List object support than XL2007, but when you open a
file with a complete List object in 2003, you'll get a warning that the
file was created in a "newer" version of Excel (even if it was created
in XL 98). If my memory is correct, Mac Excel retains the list object
when it's created in 2003.

-Jim