How to convert the default spreadsheet app, Numbers, to Excel in 2026.

Select an Excel file in Finder by clicking once on it. Then go to File > Get Info or type ⌘ + i and click the Open with section near the bottom of the window, Now choose Excel as the desired app and then click Change All… You will be asked to confirm this change. Now all .xlsx files will open with Excel. You will likely want to apply this same change to .csv files as your Mac will automatically choose to open them in Numbers, too.

I fear some of these answers are at somewhat of a tangent, at least as far as how I read the question...

> I am trying to convert the default Mac app, Numbers, to Excel, for opening files.

WHICH files, specifically?

If you have Excel installed, and you double-click on an Excel document (.xslx file), then the OS will automatically open that in Excel.

Some other file types can also be opened in Excel (.csv files, for example).

However, Excel is NOT ABLE to open a Numbers document. The techniques already listed here won't help - you can try to tell the OS to open .numbers files in Excel, but Excel, has no idea how to read a .numbers file.

If you have existing Numbers' documents that you're trying to open in Excel, the ONLY option is to open the files in Numbers and use the File -> Export to -> Excel menu to create an Excel-native version of the file. Excel will happily open this file.

Telling the Finder to direct Numbers files to Excel isn't going to work.

I’m just curious why you’d choose Excel over Numbers?

I’m a very long time Excel user (30+ years). I haven’t been stopped for want of much of anything in Numbers. Better still: Numbers deals with quite a few things wayyyy better than Excel. Yes, Numbers does a lot of very common things that Excel handles clumsily or not at all. I’m more and more impressed by Numbers as time goes on.

So what would cause you to choose the pain that is Microsoft?

Because when you're importing a spreadsheet file to another application, the application will only accept an excel file. Numbers is specific to Apple, and in my limited experience is not compatible with other applications, like Quicken, for example.

Because when you're importing a spreadsheet file to another application, the application will only accept an excel file. Numbers is specific to Apple, and in my limited experience is not compatible with other applications, like Quicken, for example.

All the better reason to be able to use Numbers. Numbers can import and export in Excel format. If it's just data transfer to something like Quicken, even better because it will probably take .CSV (comma separated values) universal formats as well. You're just dealing with data.

I'm a recovering Excel user. I get it. You want to use what's familiar. I'm telling you there are wonderful things waiting for you in Numbers.

The main thing is that there is not all-encompassing grid. The basis of Excel is the table. There is no "outside the table." In Numbers, think of the space like a giant whiteboard. You can put tables anywhere you want and only make them as big as they need to be.

Have 10,000 records? Fine. That's a 10,000 row table.

But what if you have multiple, interacting tables? In Excel, this creates a bit of a formatting nightmare. Something has to give. You have to get creative where you stick information or end up with cell widths that don't play nicely together.

In this example, I deliberately made that Cost Factors table awkwardly bridge the column alignment above it. Those are two, independent objects. I can move them around the canvas, wherever I like. The math still remains. Every cell in the main table can use those cost factors in the equation. The table can get shuffled wherever.

In Excel, you'd have to either move that smaller table off to another sheet, or find a place to kinda' stick it, in relation to the larger table above it. Same with the chart: it could be a separate sheet, or it has to play nice with the table cell edges all around it.

Yeah, there are some obscure things missing from what Excel has but, Numbers also offers many things that Excel doesn't have. I'm not missing Excel after discovering the power of Numbers.

To put a bow on what I'm saying, this is what it looks like if I export the file above, as an Excel file:

You can see it did exactly what you or I would have to do within Excel's limitations. It created one giant table. It shuffled my Cost Factors table off to some unoccupied cells to the right. It plopped the chart down over the table. Excel is too dumb to handle it any other way so that's how it has to be.

Thank you, Peggy. As I said in my original post, typing cmd-I yields no result. I can't get to the screen you are showing me. Any ideas?

It needs to be done in the Finder before opening the file, not Excel afterwards.

(265241)

BRILLIANT!!!!! Thank you so much!!