Opening Numbers and Numbers-compatible documents is accomplished with the open command from the Standard Suite.

Simply add a file reference, in HFS alias or UNIX POSIX path format, as the direct parameter for the command:

open alias "Macintosh HD:Users:Johnny:Desktop:Report.xls"

open "/Users/Johnny/Desktop/Report.xls"

In the script example below, the file reference used as the direct parameter of the open command, is generated by the choose file dialog, which returns a file reference in HFS alias format.

NOTE: the character ¬ (placed at the ends of lines 4-10) is used to indicate that lines 4-11 are part of a single script statement, which has been segmented and placed on separate lines, for the purpose of fitting within the width constrictions of this column.

Open Chosen Document
Open in AppleScript Editor
01		tell application "Numbers"
02		activate
03		try
04		set the chosenDocumentFile to ¬
05		(choose file of type ¬
06		{"com.apple.iwork.numbers.numbers", ¬
07		"com.apple.iwork.numbers.sffnumbers", ¬
08		"com.microsoft.excel.xls", ¬
09		"org.openxmlformats.spreadsheetml.sheet"} ¬
10		default location (path to documents folder) ¬
11		with prompt "Choose the Numbers document or Excel workbook to open:")
12		open the chosenDocumentFile
13		on error errorMessage number errorNumber
14		if errorNumber is not -128 then
15		display alert errorNumber message errorMessage
16		end if
17		end try
18		end tell

TIP: The script above uses the path to command to generate a disk reference to a standard user folder. Enumerations for other standard path to command locations include: documents folder/‌downloads folder/home folder/movies folder/music folder/‌pictures folder/public folder/temporary items/shared documents. For more information, view the path to command in the Standard Additions scripting dictionary.