Stop a custom function from recalculating every time the spreadsheet is open?

Question

I have a custom function that uses fetch to save some information to a spreadsheet. The problem is, it's meant to be used many times on the spreadsheet, fetching from various pages. As the amount of uses increases, needlessly re-fetching information every time the spreadsheet opens will become more and more of a problem.

Is there any way to avoid this default behavior? I still want it to recalculate every time the cell is edited, even if the parameters are exactly the same. Is there perhaps a way to tell if it's a manual edit vs. automatic recalculation, or simply disable the behavior entirely?

Answer 1

Is there perhaps a way to tell if it's a manual edit vs. automatic recalculation, or simply disable the behavior entirely?

No and no.

One of possible workarounds is to have a "switch" in some cell of the spreadsheet: say, if cell A1 has "Update" then custom functions recalculate normally; otherwise they do nothing. That cell (A1) can have data validation with dropdown, for easy switching between states. The custom functions would be modifying to include the following:

function customFunction(...) {
  var currentStatus = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet().getRange("A1").getValue();
  if (currentStatus != "Update") {
    return; 
  }
  // the rest of function