If you haven't tried it yet, Numbers '08 creates somewhat of a new paradigm for spreadsheet applications. Instead of having a sheet that's a full row/column grid, you get a workspace into which you can place any number of tables, where a table is simply an area of row/column grid. This is great for layout, but could potentially cause issues when exporting to Excel: what do you do with a document that contains five separate grid areas on one sheet?
The way Numbers handles this is to export each distinct table on your sheet as a new worksheet in an Excel workbook. To make navigating the resulting workbook simpler, Numbers automatically creates an index worksheet that links to each of the sheets it created. While this can be useful at times, it will probably get annoying if you're sending your files to people who don't need the index page. While looking at some of the Numbers threads on Apple's Discussions site, I came across an entry asking how to prevent Numbers from creating the index page...and a reply from TheQ pointing to this blog entry that explains the process -- it's a simple plist edit.
In case the blog entry vanishes, read on for the exact solution...
First, quit Numbers if it's running. Then, using Property List Editor (if you have Xcode installed) or PlistEdit Pro, open your user's com.apple.iWork.Numbers.plist file (from your user's Library » Preferences folder). Insert a new child of Root named EEDropTableOfContents, with a Class of Boolean and a Value of True. Save the file and quit the editor, and you're done.
Alternatively, you could do it directly from Terminal with this command (make sure Numbers isn't running):
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Numbers EEDropTableOfContents -bool TRUE
That's how I tested the hint, and it worked fine. Replace TRUE with FALSE if you ever want Numbers to start creating index worksheets again.
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Mac OS X Hints
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