Move a Pivot Table in Excel

Sometimes you may want to move a PivotTable to another location in Excel. The reason could be that you want to create room for new worksheet rows, columns, or cells. This tutorial explains how to move a PivotTable in Excel.

Move a PivotTable in Excel

We can move a PivotTable in Excel to a new worksheet in the current workbook or another workbook. We can also move it to another location in the active worksheet.

To a new worksheet in the current workbook

We will use the following PivotTable in our illustration.

We use the following steps:

  1. Select any cell in the PivotTable.
  2. Click PivotTable Analyze >> Actions >> Move PivotTable.
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The Move PivotTable dialog box is displayed.

  1. Under Choose where you want the PivotTable report to be placed, select the New Worksheet option and click the OK button.

Excel opens a new worksheet and moves the PivotTable to it.

Table

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The moved PivotTable retains most of its formatting except the column widths which need adjusting.

The original PivotTable occupied a range starting with cell A1, but the moved PivotTable starts at cell A3. You need to move it so that it begins at cell A1. The next section covers how this can be done.

To another location in the current worksheet

We will use the following PivotTable that begins in cell A3 in our illustration.

We use the following steps:

  1. Select any cell in the PivotTable.
  2. Click PivotTable Analyze >> Actions >> Move PivotTable.
  3. In the Move PivotTable dialog box under Choose where you want the PivotTable report to be placed, select Existing Worksheet. Type the full reference of the first cell of the destination range in the Location box and click the OK button. In our example, cell A1 is the first cell of our destination range.

The PivotTable is moved to a destination range that begins at cell A1.

Note: Instead of typing the first cell of the destination range in the Location box, you can use the point-and-click method. First, click the Collapse dialog box button that has an up-arrow icon.

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The Move PivotTable dialog box is collapsed.

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Click cell A1.

The selected cell A1 has a dotted border and its cell reference is entered in the Location box.

Click the Expand dialog button that has a down-arrow icon.

The dialog box is expanded.

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To a worksheet in another workbook.

The Move PivotTable dialog box does not have an option for moving a Pivotable to a worksheet in another workbook. We can use the copy and paste method to move the PivotTable.

We use the following steps:

  1. Select any cell in the PivotTable.
  2. Click PivotTable Analyze >> Actions >> Select >> Entire PivotTable.
  1. Click any blank cell in the worksheet to deselect the Actions group command. Press Ctrl + X to cut the PivotTable and copy it to the Clipboard.
  2. Open the worksheet in another workbook and select cell A1.
  3. Press Ctrl + V to paste the PivotTable.

The moved PivotTable retains most of its formatting except the column widths which you need to adjust.

Conclusion

You may want to move a PivotTable in Excel to another location to create room for new rows, columns, or even cells. This tutorial showed how to move a PivotTable to a new worksheet in the current workbook or another workbook. It also explained how to move a PivotTable to another location in the active worksheet.

Tomasz Decker is an Excel specialist, skilled in data analysis and financial modeling.