Why Should I Convert My Formulas to Text?

Go to a spreadsheet and type =NOW(). Record the value. Save the sheet, close it, and reopen it. Then compare the new value to the old one. You'll notice that Google has conveniently updated the time in the cell to the new current time.

These recalculations take place regardless of what your "Recalculate" settings are set to (File -> Settings -> Calculation).

That's great when you want the current time, but what if your formulas are connecting to a paid API? Google Sheets doesn't know what it should & shouldn't recalculate, so you'll get billed again for the same API call!

Other things that can make your formula reload when you don't want it to include:

• Pressing Ctrl+X Ctrl+V to move a cell
• Pressing Ctrl+C Ctrl+V intending copy the raw value of the cell
• Inserting or deleting a column to the left of the cell
• Inserting or deleting a row to the top of the cell

Converting to text stops unwanted calculations

We don't want that to happen to you. Converting your cells to text stops your formulas from being reloaded automatically in any of these ways by Google Sheets.

To protect yourself from these unwanted updates, you can remove the formula altogether by converting your cells to text. To make this easy for you to do, we've provided a toolbar.

If it looks like this, you're good to go:

And when it has this notice, click the button "Convert all formulas to text" to commit your changes:

Finally, here's a before & after of how your formula will look. Notice the difference in the formula bar while the value in A1 stays the same.

Before:

After:

These options will only affect Sapiengraph formulas. So if you have other calculations that depend on your data fetched from Sapiengraph, don't worry - those formulas will remain formulas. After converting the formulas you want to lock, you can sleep safe knowing you'll never be billed for Google's undesired background data refreshes.

What if I don't convert to text?

If you don't convert to text, you may accrue unanticipated charges as Google automatically tries to refresh your formulas in the background. Additionally, if you use Ctrl+X or Ctrl+C (Windows) to move your data around, or insert extra rows or columns, all of the values affected by this change will recalculate.