10.5: Put a Numbers chart on the Dashboard

Feb 08, '08 07:30:05AM

Contributed by: t3knomanser

I built a Numbers document to track my finances. One thing I added was a chart that allows me to see the balance in every account over time, plus my total worth.

Wouldn't that be great to have that chart at my fingertips? Why, it'd be awesome to have that as a Dashboard widget. Numbers doesn't support this, and it has no AppleScript dictionary. Taking a screenshot won't do so great either, since I'd have to take it every time I updated the numbers.

So here's what you do:

  1. Put your chart(s) on their own sheet.
  2. Save the workbook with that sheet active.
  3. Find the Numbers file using the Finder, control-click on it, and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
  4. There will be a folder called QuickLook (see note). Inside that folder, there will be a jpg image file.
  5. Open that image file in Safari, and use the built-in web-clip features to turn it into a widget.
Note: While the folder is named QuickLook, it doesn't appear to be used for QuickLook; instead, it becomes the icon for the bundle. This means this hint should also work on Tiger.

[robg adds: Note that web clip is a 10.5-only feature. On 10.4, you'll have to find some other way to display the image. I imagine that, amongst the 3,421 Dashboard widgets listed on Apple's site, there's probably one that can display an image file. Alternatively, you could use GeekTool to display the image, but it would then be on your screen all the time.]

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