The ImportRange, ImportHtml, ImportFeed, ImportData, ImportXml and GoogleFinance functions get refreshed from time to time as documented at the calculation settings page.
You can force these functions to refresh immediately by tweaking their parameters. For example, you can modify the letter case in the range
parameter in an importrange()
, or the letter case of the https
prefix in an importhtml()
.
This is most often done to work around time-out issues, like this:
=iferror( importrange("...ssID...", lower(A1)), importrange("...ssID...", upper(A1)) )
Custom functions are supposed to only be re-evaluated when their arguments change. In practice, they will often be recalculated when the spreadsheet is opened by a user. A custom function can store a timestamp value in the Properties service to maintain a record of when they were last called.
To answer your question: if you just leave a formula be, there is no way to predict when it will update, nor an easy way to discover when the most recent refresh took place, short of spooling and comparing the results periodically. The exception is with custom functions as described above.