Excel How to Fix: Pivot Table Name Field is Not Valid


You may sometimes encounter the following error in Excel when attempting to create a pivot table:

The PivotTable field name is not valid.

This error usually occurs when you attempt to create a pivot table but one of the columns in the data source you’re using does not have a header.

To resolve this error, simply add a header name to the column(s) that are missing headers.

The following example shows how to resolve this error in practice.

Example: How to Fix Pivot Table Name Field is Not Valid

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that contains information about various basketball players:

Notice that the first column contains team names for each player but there is no column header.

Suppose we would like to use this dataset to create a pivot table that summarizes the points scored by team and by position.

If we attempt to use the range A1:C11 to create this pivot table, we’ll receive an error message:

Excel how to fix pivot table name field is not valid

We receive this error message because there is no header in cell A1.

To resolve this error, we can simply add a header name:

Now when we use the range A1:C11 to create a pivot table, we won’t receive any error message because each column we’re attempting to use now has a header name.

We will be able to successfully create the pivot table without any errors:

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to fix other common errors in Excel:

How to Fix the #NAME Error in Excel
How to Ignore #VALUE! Error in Excel
How to Use IFERROR Then Blank in Excel

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