Connection to Google Sheets Down

Looker Q&A Looker Studio
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My looker studio connections to google sheets went down last weekend. It is supposed to pull data from a couple different sheets to tables, and has been doing this without issue for months. The listed issue is “Credential Settings Error. Credential settings are incorrect. An editor will need to edit and reconnect the data source to resolve this.” I have attempted the following troubleshooting steps with no resolution to the problem:

  1. Re adding the sheets as a data source. When going to add the sheet as a data source, it says that “Looker Studio requires authorization to connect to your Google Sheets”. I authorize, and add the sheet, but this does not change the issue. When refreshing or reloading the page, the authorization request persists.
  2. I have checked that I am signed into the correct google account, and signed out & back in on both ends.
  3. I have checked that I am still owner & have editing rights on the sheets & the looker studio dashboard. I am the sole editor of the looker studio dashboard.
  4. I have tried adding different sheets, the issue persists with those too
  5. I have tried different browsers (Chrome & Firefox)
  6. I have tried browser & computer restarts
  7. I have tried creating brand new sheets in a different drive (personal vs shared) the issue is present with them too.
  8. Sheets that other people have added when they were owner of the Looker studio dashboard are also down
  9. Embedded google slide presentations, and embedded graphs from google sheets are not experiencing this issue, just data pulled directly from google sheets to tables.
  10. I have made a dashboard with my personal google account, and successfully added data from a sheet saved on that personal google account. Unfortunately, the account I am having this issue with is a work account, and contains sensitive information so I am unable to use my personal account as a workaround.

If anyone has ideas, please let me know!

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Additionally - the dashboard lists the data source for a table correctly when selected. The table properties area shows all the settings correctly, with dimensions, metrics, and sources available for selection. The Credential settings error is only visible where the table is on the dashboard itself.

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That error often stems from a Workspace OAuth policy block.

In Admin Console, go to Security → Access & data control → API controls → App access control, and mark Looker Studio and the Sheets connector as Trusted. Also, check the credential mode and ensure context-aware access isn’t blocking the owner.

A few quick fixes that helped:

  • Revoke Looker Studio access at myaccount.google.com → Security → Third-party access, then reconnect.

  • Turn off aggressive tracking protection/ad-blockers (they can kill the auth cookie).

  • Copy the report and re-create the data source from scratch.

  • Check Sheets API quotas and domain restrictions.

You can also test if your Sheets API is actually returning data before blaming Looker Studio:

from googleapiclient.discovery import build

service = build(‘sheets’, ‘v4’)

result = service.spreadsheets().values().get(

spreadsheetId=‘YOUR_SHEET_ID’,

range=‘Sheet1!A1:D5’

).execute()

print(result.get(‘values’, ))

For stability, I stopped querying Sheets directly. Now I land data in BigQuery and point Looker Studio there. I’ve used Windsor.ai to schedule pulls (GA4/Salesforce → BigQuery) and avoid the Sheets auth flakiness. Airbyte worked too, but BigQuery + scheduled loads have been the most reliable.