Sometimes I realise I’m really no different to my users – I hate change! Let me be more specific, I hate change I don’t control, or that takes my by surprise. This can make release time a bit stressful. As well as large enhancements that get a lot of publicity, Salesforce include a lot of smaller changes that can easily go unnoticed, until they’re annoying you and you’re wondering why things aren’t working the same as last week.
With the Spring ’20 release a new feature was unveiled to little fanfare: “Turn Off Automatic Updates to the Report Preview to Edit Reports Faster“. What does it do? Well, the clue is in the name. It’s actually a very smart update that means you can switch off the automatic refresh when building or editing a report.
Why is this useful? Previously, after every change e.g. add a filter or add a new column, you would have to wait for the preview to refresh before you could continue making changes. If you were making a lot of changes, this could really slow down the process of building a report. With the update, you can make all your changes first, then select “Refresh” to see an updated preview.
The thing is, the release made “Update Preview Automatically” turned OFF by default, and I personally prefer my report preview to refresh every time I make a change. In good news, I can easily change the default to ON, and so can you if this is also your preferred way of working!
Useful links
Salesforce Help: Turn Automatic Updates to the Report Preview On or Off
The Everyday Admin 
Just discovered this option yesterday! I also like auto updates when I need to see if I’m on the right track, however I turn it off if I am cranking through essentially the same report for multiple people and don’t need to see a preview.
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So how do I change the default?? Thanks
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Check out the second screenshot in my post! There’s an on/off toggle on the right hand side.
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Yes, that is on each report…but I thought you said there is a default I can check so that any time I go to a report it is ON (as opposed to OFF)? Thanks
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If you switch it to ON on a report, your preference is saved and it will remain ON for all other reports.
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Thank you, I did not realize it stayed.
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I was annoyed that it wasn’t refreshing at first and turned it back on. I thought about it though and realized things were much quicker with it off, so I turned it off again and forced myself to try it out for a while. Now I wouldn’t go back! I still refresh every once in a while to check in on my changes, but it’s made it much quicker for me to build out complicated reports.
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It’s probably like most things…you just have to stick with it till you get used to the change!
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