Published on November 1st, 2023 by Jake Sheridan
Pivot tables are powerful tools in Google Sheets for summarizing data, finding patterns, and reorganizing information. It’s no wonder that many people use them. One common question when working with pivot tables is how to refresh them. The simple answer is that you don’t need to. Google Sheets pivot tables automatically refresh whenever you modify the source data. So, you rarely have to worry about refreshing them.
Of course, things don’t always work exactly as they should. If your pivot table is not refreshing, you can try a few tricks.
Refresh the Page
Just like any website, Google Sheets sometimes needs a quick refresh. Simply click the refresh button on your browser, wait for the page to reload, and your pivot table is likely to refresh.
Make Sure New Data is Included in the Range
Another reason why a pivot table may not appear to update correctly is if new data has been added after the end of the range. In the following image, the original range of the pivot table is highlighted, and a new data row has been added below it.
When we check the associated pivot table, the new item with SKU code 9999 is not visible because this row is not included in the pivot table.
If you encounter this issue, here’s how to fix it:
Step 1
Click on any cell within the pivot table, and the Pivot Table Editor will open.
Step 2
At the top of the editor is the data range for the pivot table. Update the range to include the newly added row(s). For example, if the original range was data!A1:E16 and you added one extra row, you can update the range to data!A1:E17.
Step 3
The pivot table will immediately update to include the new row(s).
Check Filters
The last thing to check if the pivot table is not refreshing is whether filters have been applied. If filters are applied, new items may not appear in the pivot table. For example, if you apply a filter to the SKU column of the item so that only rows with specific SKU codes are displayed, if a new SKU code is added, the corresponding rows will be hidden by default.
If this happens, the best way to fix it is to remove any existing filters that are causing the issue and recreate them as needed. Here’s how:
Step 1
Open the Pivot Table Editor, scroll down to the list of filters at the bottom, and click the X next to each filter you want to remove. Start with the filters most likely to cause the problem. These will be the ones that filter fields with new values in the newly added data.
Step 2
Once you’ve removed the problematic filters, all new values should appear in your pivot table.
Step 3
You can recreate filters by clicking “Add” and creating a new filter.
In summary, you’ve learned how to refresh a pivot table in Google Sheets. If you want to learn more, check out all the Google Sheets tutorials on Crawlan.com.
