.NUMBERS

Introduction

A .numbers file is a spreadsheet from Apple Numbers, part of Apple’s iWork suite since 2007. Unlike most spreadsheets, a Numbers sheet is a free canvas that can hold several tables, charts, pictures and text boxes. Apple has never published the format, so Numbers files are usually exported to XLSX, CSV or PDF to share them.

Structure

Since the 2013 versions of iWork, a Numbers document is a ZIP archive (or a macOS package folder) holding an Index folder of .iwa files, a Data folder of pictures, a Metadata folder and preview images, the same layout as an Apple Pages document. IWA files hold Protocol Buffers messages compressed with a variant of Snappy framing; table cells are packed into tiles of binary cell data inside them. Versions before 2013 stored the document as XML.

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