Elite Membership

How to Delete Pivot Table?

Written by Tanuj Kumar Tanuj Kumar WallStreetMojo Contributor Writes WallStreetMojo articles with practical finance, Excel, valuation, and business learning context. View Full Profile
Reviewed by Dheeraj Vaidya, CFA, FRM Dheeraj Vaidya, CFA, FRM Content Reviewer & Course Director Dheeraj is a former J.P. Morgan and CLSA Equity Analyst with nearly two decades of experience in financial modeling, valuation, equity research, and corporate finance. He specializes in helping students and professionals develop practical and in-demand finance skills through structured and AI-powered, 20+ Years of experience CFA, FRM, IIT Delhi, IIM Lucknow Financial Modeling View Full Profile
Updated Dec 20, 2024
Read Time 2 min

Delete Pivot Table in Excel

As you know, a PivotTable is used to summarize the raw data into an informative table. And you can easily remove a PivotTable by following the below simple steps; generally, the PivotTable has shown the error message -“We can’t make this change for the selected cells because it will affect a PivotTable” to prevent the accidental deletion of data.

Deleting Pivot Table Excel Template

Download Excel Template

How to Delete Pivot Table From Excel?

Let us understand this with some practical examples.

Example #1 – Removing a Pivot table

Below are the steps used for deleting pivot table from excel –

  1. If we cannot make this change for the selected cells because it may affect a PivotTable, as shown in the screenshot below, we must choose the whole PivotTable by pressing u0022Ctrl + Au0022 and then press the u0022Deleteu0022 button again.
  2. Then, pick a cell anywhere in the PivotTable to show the Pivot Tools on the ribbon.

    Click on the u0022Selectu0022 tab, select the u0022Entire PivotTable,u0022 and then press the u0022Deleteu0022 key.Else, we must select the u0022Clear Allu0022 option under the u0022Analyzeu0022 in the same tab, u0022Clearu0022 (as shown in the below screenshot).Raw Date:Pivot Table Data:

Example #2 – Remove the Pivot Table by Keeping the Stored Data

We first create a backup for the PivotTable data and then remove the pivot table.

  • Copy the data from the PivotTable and paste it as values to another location, as shown in the below figure.
How to Delete Pivot Table?
  • Then follow the step of Removing a Pivot Table.

Example #3 – Removing the Entire Worksheet

We can delete the entire Excel sheet with the PivotTable to remove a PivotTable from an Excel workbook.

Select the sheet in which the PivotTable is located, right-click on the sheet name, and select the “Delete” sheet to delete the entire worksheet, as shown in the figure below.

Delete Pivot Table Example 1-6

Things to Remember Here

  • We must always take a backup of data before removing the PivotTable.

You can download this How to Remove Pivot Table in Excel template here –  Remove Pivot Table Excel Template

This article is a step-by-step guide on deleting the PivotTable in Excel. Here, we discuss removing PivotTable by keeping the stored data safe along with practical examples and downloadable templates. You may learn more about Excel from the following articles: –