I have a Numbers spreadsheet that lives in iCloud. I use edit on both an iPad and on a Macintosh. If I edit the spreadsheet on the Macintosh, save it in iCloud, and then open it on the iPad, it has no active cell. This means that I must scroll to the end (where I enter new information) by repeatedly swiping upward, which is tedious. With an earlier version of Numbers, the active cell stayed active, and I could use an arrow key on the iPad’s external keyboard to move it and the active cell would jump into visibility on the screen, with no scrolling required. When I open the spreadsheet on the Mac, where I can easily scroll using the mouse or page down with the keyboard, the active cell from the last edit on the iPad is still active. How can I keep the active cell when I open the spreadsheet on the iPad after editing on the Mac?
There must be some nuance that I’m missing, because on another sheet (tab in Excel-speak) in the same file, the active cell remains active, but on the primary sheet, it does not. Of course, the primary sheet has about a thousand rows to scroll through. This behavior is independent of which sheet I edit on the Mac.
This situation seems to be happening more and more - a useful feature is lost due to a software update. I guess the software is so complex these days that it is impossible for the (Apple) developers to test every feature in all hardware configurations (years ago I pointed out that this might be a role for quantum computers Quantum-Mechanical Computer )
For your Numbers problem I expect all you can do is give a bug report (“feedback”) to Apple: Feedback - Numbers for iCloud - Apple
I noticed the same thing when Numbers introduced the Reading view feature (where a document can be opened in read-only mode so that it doesn’t get edited accidentally). I believe that feature was added at version 10.1 for iPad Numbers.
But at some point the problem went away for me. I assumed that the issue was “fixed” in an app update. I am now running version 10.3.5 on my iPad. I do not have this problem with the current Numbers.
I am also running 10.3.5 on the iPad, but since the problem is opening Mac-saved spreadsheets on the iPad, I would guess it’s a Numbers 6.1 on macOS issue. But, of course, that’s a guess. Also, as I noted, I have the problem on the longer of two sheets in the file. The active cell carries over on the shorter of the two sheets, where it would be less trouble to scroll. (Have you met my friend Murphy?)
For what it’s worth, someone at iWork got back to me and asked for more info about the above problem, which I provided. I haven’t heard anything since, but it was nice that someone asked for more info.
But I’m back with another peculiarity. On the iPad this morning, I got a message saying that I had two versions of my file, they were out of sync, and I should choose which one I wanted to work on. Both files were on the iPad! If one had been local and on in iCloud, it might have made sense, but the iPad said both versions were on the iPad. How and why would the iPad get two versions of the file?