You might have to make changes to a workbook that contains a pivot table. If someone else created that workbook, you may not be sure where to find the Excel table that was used as the pivot table's source data. In some workbooks there can be several Excel tables, and it's not immediately obvious which table was used.

How To Locate the Source Data

To locate the source data, follow these steps:

1. Select any cell in the pivot table.

2. On the Ribbon, under the PivotTable Tools tab, click the Options tab.

3. In the Data group, click the top section of the Change Data Source command.

In the Change PivotTable Data Source dialog box, you can see the the source table or range in the Table/Range box. This may be a worksheet reference, such as

• Sales_North!$A$1:$O$500

or a table name, such as

• Sales_East

On the worksheet, behind the dialog box, you can see the source range, surrounded by a moving border.

4. Click OK, to close the dialog box.

Unhide a Sheet

Usually the source range will be visible, and surrounded by a moving border. If the source range isn't activated, it may be on a hidden worksheet. You can follow these steps to unhide a sheet:

1. On the Ribbon, click the Home tab

2. In the Cells group, click Format.

2. In the Visibility section, click Hide & Unhide, and then click the Unhide Sheet command.

3. In the list, select the sheet that you want to make visible, and click OK.

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For more information on pivot tables, see the Pivot Table Topics on my Contextures web site.

In Excel 2003, you protected a worksheet, and in the list of options, added a checkmark to allow all users of the worksheet to use PivotTable reports.

However, you can’t create a new pivot table, or refresh a pivot table on the worksheet because some buttons on the PivotTable toolbar are disabled.

When you protect a worksheet and allow use of PivotTable reports, you can work with existing PivotTable reports. You can’t create a new PivotTable report on the protected sheet, or refresh existing pivot tables.

To refresh the pivot table, you can temporarily unprotect the worksheet, refresh the pivot table, then protect the sheet. You can do this manually, or record a macro, then run that macro to refresh the pivot table.

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For more information on pivot tables, see the PivotTable Topics on my Contextures web site.