Google authentication problems

If you experience errors when trying to fetch files from Google Drive, it is probably a sharing / permissions problem.

Common problems include:

• Typo in the link. Maybe the URL of the file is not correct. Try it in a normal browser window.
• Not shared. The spreadsheet has not been shared with you. It either needs to be shared as fully public ("Anyone with the link can view") - or shared with named users.
• Wrong Google account. You logged in as a Google user to fetch the dataset, but this user is not one of those that the dataset has been shared with. To fix this, you can either change the sharing link to "Anyone with the link can view" (see below), or you can click the "Revoke Google authentication" button and then try again as the correct Google user that the document has been shared with.

Sharing tips

On Google Drive, when you share a file, you can either make the link Restricted, which means that only people in a specific list can use the link:

Or you can allow Anyone with the link to open the file.

Clearly the "Anyone with the link" option is the most foolproof, so if you are getting errors when DataClassroom tries to fetch files from Google Drive, try setting the sharing option on the file to this.

Troubleshooting

If you are wondering what's happening, first try to open the document link in a normal browser window. Does that work? If not, maybe the document is not visible to you, or rather, the Google user you are logged in as. If you have multiple Google accounts, this can be the problem.

You can see which Google user is currently logged in at the top right of the screen in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, etc.

Once you are clear that you can open the document as a particular Google user, then you can go into DataClassroom, try to fetch the document again and if it fails, click "Revoke Google Authentication" in order to change user to the one that you now are certain can open the document.