As I became an Apple friend more or less recently, I figured it was time for me to start blogging about it.
Episode I (not implying that there would be a sequel), Apple Numbers and an annoying defect that has been making us waste so much time.
Valérie is now self-employed, and in need of a template for her (Norwegian) invoices. No worry, after a bit of googling she found a forum with a link with the killer template.
Customizing the template turned out to be dead easy, except for the detail of the bank account number (1234 56 78910). We just have not found any way to move, edit or even delete it. Hard to believe, yep. Infuriating, a bit. Sad, definitely.
Geek once, geek forever. We start by saving our modifications so far under « Invoice » and get to our beloved terminal.
What is this file type again?
$ file Invoice.numbers
Invoice.numbers: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract
Wait a minute, I know how to deal with those guys. Create a temporary directory, move there, uncompress:
$ unzip ../Invoice.numbers
Archive: ../Invoice.numbers
extracting: QuickLook/Thumbnail.jpg
extracting: buildVersionHistory.plist
inflating: index.xml
vi (or any editor) to the rescue
$ vi index.xml
Finding and replacing the number in the file
:%s/1234 56 78910/1111 11 11111/g
save the changes and then quit
:wq
Using finder, build the zip file back together. The terminal can do it as well:
$ zip -r ../Invoice2.numbers *
adding: QuickLook/ (stored 0%)
adding: QuickLook/Thumbnail.jpg (deflated 24%)
adding: buildVersionHistory.plist (deflated 20%)
adding: index.xml (deflated 94%)
If anybody knows of a better way to change that bank account number, please, come forward.