WARNING
This article uses unofficial terminology.
A dependency is a directed relationship between two terms in a spreadsheet, where one term’s value depends on another’s.
Dependencies form the underlying structure that determines evaluation order and recalculation behavior in Google Sheets.
Every formula defines one or more dependencies through cell references, named ranges, or function calls.
Circular Dependencies
A circular dependency arises when a term depends—directly or indirectly—on itself. Google Sheets detects such cycles and raises a #REF! error.
Iterative calculation can sometimes be enabled to handle controlled cycles, though this is rarely used for ordinary modeling.
Volatile Dependencies
Volatile functions introduce volatile dependencies.
Volatile functions (e.g. RAND(), NOW(), RANDBETWEEN()) cause dependent formulas to recalculate even if their inputs have not changed.
These can introduce performance overhead in large models.
See Also
- Calculation limits - boundaries on recursion, dependency depth, and evaluation time.