How to Duplicate a Pivot Table in Excel

Duplicating a Pivot Table in Excel should be as simple as copy and paste, but it's one of those tasks that often feels surprisingly tricky. If you've ever tried it and ended up with a mess of non-functional data, you're not alone. This guide will walk you through the correct ways to duplicate a Pivot Table so you can analyze your data from multiple perspectives without starting from scratch each time.

Why Duplicate a Pivot Table?

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." You're already staring at a perfectly good Pivot Table - why make a second one? Duplicating your Pivot Table isn't just about making a backup, it's a powerful and efficient way to expand your analysis.

Here are a few common scenarios where duplicating comes in handy:

Creating different views of the same data: Maybe your first table shows monthly sales by region. You can duplicate it and then quickly rearrange the new table to show sales by product instead, without disturbing your original view. You can create dozens of variations to look for different trends.
Building a dashboard: A good Excel dashboard is often just a collection of Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts working together on one sheet. Duplicating your initial table is the fastest way to build out all the components you need, like tables for an executive summary, charts for trend visualization, and more granular views for deeper analysis.
Testing a new layout: Want to see if your data tells a better story by swapping rows and columns or adding a new filter? Duplicate the original table and experiment freely on the copy. If you don't like it, you can just delete it without losing your primary report.
Maintaining consistency: When you duplicate a Pivot Table correctly, the copy shares the same underlying data source and formatting. This ensures all your related reports are consistent and update together, saving you from having to sync them manually.

In short, duplicating saves time and opens the door to more complex and insightful reports. Instead of building five separate Pivot Tables to answer five different questions, you build one and duplicate it four times, making small adjustments to each copy.

Method 1: The Classic Copy and Paste

This is the most intuitive method and the one most people try first. When done correctly, it works perfectly and creates a new, independent Pivot Table that's connected to the same data source as the original. The key is in selecting the entire table before you copy.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

Select the Entire Pivot Table: Click on any cell inside your existing Pivot Table. Then, navigate to the PivotTable Analyze tab in the Excel ribbon. On the far left, click the Actions dropdown, and then click Select > Entire PivotTable. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + A (or Cmd + A on Mac). Just be sure you press it while a cell within the Pivot Table is selected - sometimes you may need to press it twice to select the whole table.
Copy the Selection: Once the entire table is highlighted, copy it using your preferred method. You can right-click and choose "Copy," use the Copy button on the Home tab, or press Ctrl + C (Cmd + C on Mac).
Paste the Pivot Table: Click on a blank cell where you want your new Pivot Table to start. It's best practice to leave a few empty rows and columns between tables to prevent them from overlapping if one of them expands. Press Ctrl + V (Cmd + V on Mac) or right-click and choose "Paste" to place your duplicate table.

That's it! You now have a second, identical Pivot Table. You can interact with it completely independently - drag fields around, add new filters, or change the values - and it won't affect your original table at all.

Method 2: Using the "Move PivotTable" Command

While the name suggests moving, this feature can also be used as a super-simple way to create a copy in a new location, particularly a new worksheet. This method is quick, clean, and avoids any potential formatting hitches from a copy-paste.

This approach involves combining a copy/paste action with the "Move" command to precisely position your new table.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

Copy and Paste First: Follow Method 1 to create a duplicate table on your current worksheet.
Select the New Table: Click anywhere inside the newly created duplicate table.
Open the Move Dialogue Box: Go to the PivotTable Analyze tab in the ribbon. In the Actions group, click Move PivotTable.
Choose the New Location: A small dialog box will pop up. From here, you can choose:
- New Worksheet: This will create a brand new sheet in your workbook and place the Pivot Table starting in cell A1. This is a very clean way to break out different parts of your analysis.
- Existing Worksheet: Select this option and then specify the cell address where you want the top-left corner of your Pivot Table to be. You can do this on the current sheet or any other existing sheet in your file.
Confirm the Move: Click OK. Excel will move your duplicate Pivot Table to its new home, perfectly formatted and ready to be customized.

Method 3: Duplicating the Entire Worksheet

If your goal is to create a full-fledged copy of a report, perhaps to send a variation to a different department or to build a new version for the next time period, duplicating the entire worksheet is the easiest way to go. This copies everything on the sheet - Pivot Tables, charts, slicers, text boxes, and formatting.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

Locate the Sheet Tab: At the bottom of your Excel window, find the tab for the worksheet containing your Pivot Table.
Open the "Move or Copy" Dialog: Right-click on the sheet tab. A context menu will appear. Select Move or Copy...
Create the Copy: In the "Move or Copy" window, find the checkbox at the bottom that says Create a copy. Make sure you check this box! If you don't, Excel will simply move the original sheet, not duplicate it. You can also choose where to place the new sheet in the order of tabs.
Click OK: Excel will instantly create an exact copy of your worksheet, named something like "Sheet1 (2)". You can double-click the new sheet tab to rename it to something more meaningful.

This new sheet with its Pivot Table is a perfect clone. Now you can modify it as needed without any impact on your original report.

An Important Concept: The Pivot Cache

Here's a piece of technical information that's actually super practical. When you create a Pivot Table, Excel doesn't work with your raw data directly. Instead, it creates a special, optimized copy of your source data in your computer's memory called a Pivot Cache. This is why Pivot Tables are so fast and responsive.

When you duplicate a Pivot Table using any of the methods above, the new table shares the same Pivot Cache as the original. This is incredibly efficient and has two big advantages:

Reduced File Size: Because you're only storing the source data in memory once, your Excel file stays smaller, even if you have ten different pivot tables analyzing it.
Synchronized Refreshing: This is the main benefit. When you refresh one of the Pivot Tables (by right-clicking and choosing "Refresh"), all other Pivot Tables connected to the same cache are refreshed automatically. This saves you from having to go through and update each one individually if your source data changes.

Sharing a cache is almost always what you want. However, in the rare instance you need two Pivot Tables from the exact same data source to be completely separate (with separate caches), you would need to use Excel's old PivotTable Wizard by pressing Alt + D, then P to launch it. But for 99% of reporting needs, the shared cache is your friend.

Tips for Managing Your Duplicated Tables

Once you start creating multiple Pivot Tables, a little organization goes a long way.

Give Your Tables Unique Names: By default, your tables will be named "PivotTable1", "PivotTable2", etc. Make your life easier by giving them descriptive names. Click a table, go to the PivotTable Analyze tab, and type a new name in the PivotTable Name box on the far left. Naming it "SalesByRegion" is much clearer than "PivotTable7."
Connect a Single Slicer to Multiple Tables: This is a powerful dashboarding trick. If you have several duplicated tables sharing the same cache, you can insert a Slicer (under PivotTable Analyze > Insert Slicer) and connect it to all of them. To do this, right-click the slicer, choose Report Connections, and check the boxes for all the Pivot Tables you want to control. Now, clicking an item on that slicer will filter every connected table at once.
Remember to Refresh: Creating copies doesn't change the fact that Pivot Tables are not live. If your original source data (the data range or table your Pivot Table is based on) changes, you still need to refresh them to see the updates. Simply right-click any of the connected tables and hit Refresh.

Final Thoughts

Duplicating Pivot Tables is a fundamental Excel skill that moves you from simple data summaries to creating dynamic and multi-faceted reports. Whether you use a simple copy-paste or duplicate an entire worksheet, the result is the same: more time spent on finding insights and less time spent on building reports from scratch.

While mastering tasks like this in Excel is essential for hands-on analysis, it can also become a rabbit hole of manual steps when all you want is a quick answer. At Graphed, we've designed a way to get these insights without any of the manual wrangling. Instead of copying, pasting, and modifying tables, you can simply ask for the next view you want to see - "now show me the same data as a monthly trend line," or "create a pie chart of revenue by country" - and your dashboard will update instantly, using live data directly from your connected marketing and sales platforms. Check out Graphed to see how easy it can be.