Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Inside Out

Building a PivotTable from an Existing PivotTable

The first time you create a PivotTable from any data source, internal or external, Excel creates a copy of the data source, as a cache, in memory. When you modify the table, for example, by rearranging column and row fields, Excel refers to the cache, not to the original data source. (When you refresh the table, of course, Excel goes back to the original data source.)

If you're creating a second or subsequent PivotTable based on the same internal data source or the same query of external data, it's most efficient to let Excel use the same cache. Otherwise, the program duplicates memory unnecessarily. To let Excel know that you're planning to reuse data that's already in use for another PivotTable, ...