How to Remove a Field From a Pivot Table in Excel & Google Sheets

This tutorial demonstrates how to remove a field from a pivot table in Excel and Google Sheets.

 

 

Remove Pivot Table Field

When you have a pivot table in Excel, each field is associated with a column from the source data. To simplify or further summarize your pivot table, you might want to remove one of the fields. There are a few ways to do this.

Remove Field From PivotTable Fields List

The fields displayed in your pivot table are checked in the PivotTable Fields list. Simply uncheck a field to remove it from the pivot table. However, if your field is a date, double-check for automatic date fields that may have been created.

 

 

When you add a date field to a pivot table, it creates two new fields – Quarters and Years – that are automatically added to the table. To remove a date field from the pivot table, you need to remove all the date fields: the original field and the automatically generated fields.

 

 

Drag the Field Off the Layout Grid

You can remove a field from your pivot table by dragging the field off the field list. For this example, remove the Region field from the Filters area.

 

 

Select the field and then drag it off the Field List with your mouse. Note that, since the Regions filter was already set to (All), the Order Amount values don’t change.

 

 

Right-Click the Field

Finally, you can remove a field by right-clicking on the field in the pivot table itself and clicking Remove “Region“ (where the text in quotes is the field name).

 

 

Remove a Pivot Field in Google Sheets

Consider the following pivot table in Google Sheets.

 

 

A field has been placed in the Columns section which divides the Order Amount per Region. To remove this field, simply click the cross in the top-right corner next to the field name.

 

 

The pivot table is updated to reflect the changes, and Order Amount sums are split only by Salesperson.

 

 

Tip: Try using some shortcuts when you’re working with pivot tables.