It was brought to our attention that several wpDataTables that were built using Google Sheets were no longer displaying data even though the source tables were still working correctly. Tables using other sources (CSV, for example) appear to be displaying as expected.
What is the issue?
An error is being displayed instead of showing the Google Sheet data:
“Error: wpDataTables was unable to access data. Unauthorized access. Please make the file accessible.”
Users are being presented with this error when:
- Viewing the table on the front end.
- Creating a new table – after pasting in the Google Sheet URL.
Do any workarounds exist?
This issue is similar to one we’ve seen in the past where Google makes an update to their offering and it breaks wpDataTables.
Unfortunately, our Google Sheets workarounds that have worked in the past are not working for this. Therefore, the only known workarounds at this time are:
- Downloading a CSV file of the Google Sheet and uploading that into a new table.
- Rebuilding the data in wpDataTables as a manual table.
Considerations
- We are not the only group experiencing this issue. There are a number of users of the wpDataTables plugin that have submitted support cases for this issue. We have also submitted a case on behalf of UW-Madison.
- This issue seems to be more prevalent for newer Google Sheets tables. Some users who have Google Sheets older than 1 month are not encountering an error. We have not confirmed this is happening in all cases, but this might point to why you aren’t experiencing an issue if yours are appearing correctly.
Updates
- 3/13/25 – We received confirmation that the vendor has been able to recreate this issue. However, there hasn’t been a timeline shared for when they intend to fix this.
- 3/17/25 – No updates or timeline from the vendor regarding a fix. However, our support ticket to the vendor is getting some traction from other users impacted by this issue.
- 3/19/25 – The vendor has responded to our request and confirmed that the issue is restricted to just new Google Sheets. Here’s what they noted:
- Google recently updated its security policies, which has impacted how Google Spreadsheets connect to third-party applications.
- As a result, existing spreadsheets created before this change will continue to work without issues.
- However, newly created Google Sheets will encounter connection errors due to these updated security protocols.
- They’ve noted that for new Google Sheets to work in wpDataTables, we will have to connect our plugin to a Google API account. We are currently working with the DoIT Cloud team to understand if/how we might be able to leverage the campus cloud account for this purpose.