Ipad and Excel Compatibility

[She3po]

Hi, I was thinking about purchasing an ipad as I think it might be useful when advertising our website when out and about, however we rely heavily on Excel spreadsheets. I've heard mixed reports about the compatibility, so for a lamen (sp?) is there a chance I would lose some of the data or the functuality my spreadsheets have in Excel when transferred to an ipad?

Any advice before I get too eager and just go and buy one :o

Also wondering if data can be transferred from Excell to Numbers and then back again?

I know there are Apps that can read Excel but I have no idea how good they are. You might try searching the App Store at Apple's site ans see what you find.

I have no idea what Numbers is, is it an iPad thing?

From my limited research Numbers seems to be Apple's Excel equivalent. I'm just really looking for how usable it is and whether I could transfer data over from pc to ipad and back again before I get into the Apple store and taken in by the flashy lights.

I really wouldn't do that if I were you. You can open Excel documents on an iPad but it's only something you'd want to do if you didn't have access to a proper computer. I reckon you'd rapidly be irritated by it and wish you'd bought a netbook on which you could easily put the documents on and off and edit them properly with Excel itself. The iPad might indeed be good for showing off the website when out and about if you can avoid having to involve Excel in the showing off.

Thanks for the advice Prism. TBH the ipad was going to be a replacement for our current laptop which is on it's way out rather than an additional item. We thought it would be ideal for advertising the website as well as working on the behind-the-scenes spreadsheets however, if the Excel compatibility isn't up to scratch it's not going to be a suitable solution. We have too much data on them to start from scratch and if they became unreadable or unusable I'd be heartbroken (bit of an anal spreadsheeter :o)