Manually Refresh Data in a PowerPivot Workbook

When you build a PowerPivot workbook that uses external data, you can manually refresh the data from within the workbook. You can refresh a single table, all tables that share the same connection, or all tables in the workbook. Whenever you refresh data, you may also need to recalculate data. Refreshing data means getting the latest data from external sources. Recalculating means updating the result of any formula that uses data. For more information, see Recalculating Formulas.

This topic describes how to manually refresh data in a PowerPivot workbook. If you want to know how to schedule automatic refresh of workbooks that have been published to Sharepoint, see Automatically Refresh PowerPivot Data in SharePoint. If you need to change the data associated with a workbook, you can also use the tools in PowerPivot to edit the connection information. For more information, see Edit the Properties of an Existing Data Source.

Manually Refreshing Data

If you have imported data from a relational data source, such as SQL Server and Oracle, you can update all related tables in one operation. The operation of loading new or updated data into the workbook often triggers recalculation, both of which might require some time to complete. Therefore you should always be mindful of the potential impact before you change data sources or refresh the data that is obtained from the data source.

Note

In Windows Vista and Windows 7, features in the PowerPivot window are available on a ribbon, which is discussed in this topic. In Windows XP, features are available from a set of menus. If you are using Windows XP and want to see how the menu commands relate to the ribbon commands, see The PowerPivot UI in Windows XP.

To refresh data for a single table or all tables in a workbook

  • In the PowerPivot window, click the Home tab, and in the Get External Data group, click Refresh, and then click Refresh or Refresh All.

To refresh data for all tables that use the same connection

  1. In the PowerPivot window, click the Design tab, and in the Connections group, click Existing Connections.

  2. In the Existing Connections dialog box, select a connection, and then click Refresh.

Progress information is displayed as the PowerPivot engine reloads data from the selected table or from all tables from all data sources that are included in the PowerPivot window. The workbook is fully re-processed, meaning that all keys are validated and all dependencies, including relationships and formulas, are validated and recalculated. If you get errors when you try to refresh data, it may be that the columns mappings or other properties of the data source have changed, and you need to update your workbook so that the two are in synch. For more information, see Edit the Properties of an Existing Data Source.

See Also

Other Resources

Refreshing or Changing Imported Data

Recalculating Formulas

Edit the Properties of an Existing Data Source