Recalculate All Org-Mode Tables at Once Ending with Summary Table

Question

Suppose I'm creating a Christmas list and tracking the gifts I am getting for people using org-tables. I have a named table for each group of people I am getting gifts for. These tables contains product & price info. I also have a summary table that gathers the totals for each table and puts them in their own table with a final total.

Is there a way that I can recalculate the summary table and it will go through each named table and perform a recalculation of each sub-group?

Below is a reproducible example of what I am talking about:

 #+TBLNAME: Summary
| ! | Group    | Total |
|---+----------+-------|
| # | Kids     |   208 |
| # | Spouse   |   350 |
| # | Parents  |   155 |
| # | Siblings |   205 |
|---+----------+-------|
| # | Total:   |   918 |
| ^ |          |   tot |
#+TBLFM: $3=remote($Group,$tot)::$tot=vsum(@-I..@-II)

#+TBLNAME: Kids
|   | Product    | Price |
|---+------------+-------|
|   | Video Game |    60 |
|   | Doll House |    38 |
|   | Skateboard |    60 |
|   | Books      |    50 |
|---+------------+-------|
|   | Total:     |   208 |
| ^ |            |   tot |
#+TBLFM: $tot=vsum(@-I..@-II)

#+TBLNAME: Spouse
|   | Product | Price |
|---+---------+-------|
|   | Jewlery |   120 |
|   | Clothes |    60 |
|   | Pottery |    80 |
|   | Books   |    90 |
|---+---------+-------|
|   | Total:  |   350 |
| ^ |         |   tot |
#+TBLFM: $tot=vsum(@-I..@-II)


#+TBLNAME: Parents
|   | Product       | Price |
|---+---------------+-------|
|   | Picture Frame |    45 |
|   | Books         |    50 |
|   | Records       |    60 |
|---+---------------+-------|
|   | Total:        |   155 |
| ^ |               |   tot |
#+TBLFM: $tot=vsum(@-I..@-II)

#+TBLNAME: Siblings
|   | Product        | Price |
|---+----------------+-------|
|   | Sewing Machine |   145 |
|   | Flannel        |    60 |
|---+----------------+-------|
|   | Total:         |   205 |
| ^ |                |   tot |
#+TBLFM: $tot=vsum(@-I..@-II)

I don't mind have to perform the recalculation for each row in the summary table, but suppose I edit the Kids table. If I don't manually recalculate the Kids table, the Summary table will not update either.

Answer 1

The easiest, but not necessarily the most efficient way to do that, is to use org-table-iterate-buffer-tables: that will try updating all the tables until there is no change in the buffer.

I would add an elisp src block to run that:

#+name: recalc
#+begin_src elisp
(org-table-iterate-buffer-tables)
#+end_src

Pressing C-c C-c on the source block will evaluate it and that in turn will iterate the recalculation of every table in the buffer, until it converges - or after 10 iterations when it decides it is not going to converge. Naming the source block allows you to sprinkle calls to it in the file:

#+call: recalc()

so that you don't have to go far to find a place where you can trigger recalculation: C-c C-c on one of the #+call: lines will do that.