Is there a way to manually update Numbers to recalculate formulas?

No.

You can, however, make a copy of the table with the "large pool of data" and reduce the size of table while you are making changes, then put that data back in the original table after.

"I am astonished that this feature is not available in Numbers. Extremely frustrating. Apple.... are you listening?

You can create these awesome formulas and then get bogged down with it calculating all the time, or worse-yet having to copy, make changes and then re-paste. What a giant waste of time!"

Hi Mil,

Actually, the answer to your question is "No." Apple provides the space for these user-to-user community discussions, but Apple employees and representatives participate only in a very limited manner. "Community Specialists" provide responses—

usually links to available help articles—to questions that have not received a response from the community, and Hosts monitor discussions for adherence to the terms of use and community guidelines.

The product development teams and planners do not have a visible presence here at all.

If you want to speak to Apple, and make suggestions regarding features that should be in the applications, use the Feedback Channel. Go to the Application menu (in Numbers, the Numbers menu), choose Provide Numbers Feedback, and make a feature enhancement request. Skip the rhetoric seen in your post. Describe what you want, tell how/why it would be useful to a large portion of users of the software, then send.

Regards,

Barry

PS: The 'Solved' button is usually used to mark the post containing the solution to your issue. Its prime purpose is to tell others searching for the answer to a similar question that the answer could be found here, and to move the post with that answer to the top of the discussion.

It also awards 10 reputation points to the person providing that answer (Wayne, in this case).

As you've already awarded yourself the Solved, I'd suggest you mark Wayne's as Helpful, which will also ring it into the group at the top of the discussion.

Regards,

Barry

When you say "larger pool of data" you mean how large?

Unlike Excel, Numbers is not designed to work with large datasets. If you have thousands and thousands of rows and lots of columns then that may be slowing Number down.

Also what kind of formulas are using for the calculations in your summary tables? Some formulas are "volatile", meaning they recalculate every time you make the slightest change anywhere your document. That could also be giving you sluggish performance.

If you're not working with too large a dataset then there may be ways to help you improve performance. However, that would require more details from you.

SG

No worries. That was one of my first questions when I started using Numbers; how to turn off calculations.

However, Numbers should be able to handle 3000 rows without too much problem. What kind of formulas are you using to summarize? Might be able to save you the trouble of copying over, copying back, etc.

SG