How to refresh a whole table in Numbers so that all its cells are updated?

Best practices for “premium" users often (usually) involves avoiding "replicating" the same data in multiple locations.

Sometimes that's unavoidable, though, which is why I asked if you could provide details.

OFFSET, as I am sure you are already aware, is a so-called "volatile" function. It is heavy on the processing, so if it's used a lot it can make a Numbers document sluggish. Excel is engineered to handle heavier loads.

My guess is there are more efficient ways to accomplish your goals. But not knowing what they are, readers of this thread will just have to wonder.😀

SG

Hi ColnagoDD,

Insert a Tick Box in a spare cell on that table. Clicking that Tick Box changes its state between True and False as an inconsequential "edit" but will refresh.

Regards,

Ian.

I have run into the same problem with INDIRECT and OFFSET. This is one of the more "recent" bugs Apple has introduced into Numbers. The first report I saw of INDIRECT and OFFSET not working correctly was in April 2023. There are some clever spreadsheet solutions that use INDIRECT or OFFSET that are now worthless because you never know when it will choose to not update. The bug has been reported to Apple but it wouldn't hurt if you put in another bug report (Numbers->Provide Numbers Feedback). I have a list of over a dozen bugs that I was watching, the oldest from June 2020. Many are important calculation engine problems (like this one is). None of them have been fixed. I have reported a few others without bothering to track them because I got tired of new versions coming out with no bug fixes. I realized it was pointless. I guess Apple is more concerned about fancy new features than ensuring their spreadsheet app calculates correctly. Anyway, now that I can no longer "upgrade" Numbers due to the age of my computer, I'm not reporting or tracking bugs anymore. I hope they eventually put some effort into fixing bugs.

ColnagoDD wrote:

my spreadsheet uses OFFSET function to forward some data block to multiple target locations, replicating it for different presentations.

That does not sound like spreadsheet best practices! Any chance of giving us more details? There may be a better way of accomplishing what you need.

SG