Google Sheets – How to Refresh a Cell

With the following Google Apps Script you can grab the LIBOR value and added it to a new sheet. Goto the script editor:

and add this script:

UPDATE 25-01-2013
I've noticed that the trigger occasionally troughs a NA#. Most probably because the GoogleFinance formula takes some time to get its info. Therefore I revised the snippet a bit, to have a sleep function added to it:

NEW

function myCustomCalculation() {
  //set active spreadsheet
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();

  // get both the sheets 
  var sh0 = ss.getSheets()[0], sh1 = ss.getSheets()[1];

  // sleep
  Utilities.sleep(6000);

  // get cell value
  var cell = sh0.getRange("D2").getValues()[0];

  // add libor value to other sheet  
  sh1.appendRow([new Date(), cell]);
}

OLD

function myCustomCalculation() {
  //set active spreadsheet
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();

  // flush the spreadsheet before using it  
  SpreadsheetApp.flush();

  // get both the sheets 
  var sh0 = ss.getSheets()[0], sh1 = ss.getSheets()[1];

  // get cell value from sheet[0]
  var cell = sh0.getRange("D2").getValues()[0];

  // add libor value to other sheet  
  sh1.appendRow([new Date(), cell]);
}  

The clue to the story is to create a time based trigger:

and set the trigger to execute at 5-6 pm:

See the example file I´ve created: LIBOR. I've added an extra menu item, so that you can execute the script this way.

Yes, it's possible to do that with a simple script such as this one. What it does:

1. Check whether the current value is equal to the most recent "archived" value.
2. If not, then archive the current value, inserting a row for this purpose.

After entering the script into the Script Editor, you should create a trigger for it: see Resources > This project's triggers. Two options are: running periodically, or running when the data changes. The second one is more natural for this task, but in case onChange fails to work for you (some people had issues in the past), timed trigger is an option.

function recordChanges() {
  var url = 'the URL of your spreadsheet';   // put URL here
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openByUrl(url);
  var sh = ss.getSheetByName('Sheet1');  // or whatever name
  var range = sh.getRange("A1:A2");    // assuming your data appears in A1 cell
  var values = range.getValues();
  if (values[0][0] != values[1][0]) {
    sh.insertRowAfter(1);
    sh.getRange("A2").setValue(values[0][0]);
  }
}

This can go on until you hit the limit of 200,000 cells in a spreadsheet... if the spreadsheet has one column, then it can have up to 200,000 rows, so even if another row is added every hour, it will last more than 20 years.