Authorizing Templater for Google Sheets takes two separate grants, and the second one is the step that trips people up. First you let Templater into your Google account. Then, in a browser tool called File Picker, you pick the exact spreadsheets Templater may read. If your sheets are missing from the list, the second grant is the first place to look.
This page covers only that access setup: the sign-in, the permission screens, the File Picker, what to do when it comes up empty, and the Feed URL that Templater shows once a worksheet is selected. It does not cover how to lay out the sheet or how to link a worksheet to a project, because those are separate jobs with their own steps. For the full picture of how Sheets fits into Templater, our complete reference for using Templater with Google Sheets is the better starting point.
Why there are two grants instead of one
Our help documentation states it plainly. There are two steps in authorizing Templater to access your Google Sheets data source. First, you grant Templater access to your account. Then, in a separate application called File Picker, you grant access to the specific Sheets you want Templater to use.
The reason this matters is the order of events. The account grant is the broad door, and it happens in the Google Spreadsheet Setup dialog inside the Templater panel. The File Picker grant is the narrow one, and it happens in your browser. A sheet that has not been through the narrow grant will not show up in Templater, even though you are signed in and everything else looks right. An empty list can look like a broken sign-in. In the documented steps, the File Picker grant is the part that makes specific sheets available.
Two grants explained
Account grant vs. File Picker grant
- Where it happens
- Account grantGoogle Spreadsheet Setup dialog inside the Templater panel
- File Picker grantSeparate browser application called File Picker
- What it unlocks
- Account grantTemplater can talk to your Google account
- File Picker grantSpecific spreadsheets become visible in Templater
- If you skip it
- Account grantCannot proceed to File Picker step
- File Picker grantSheet will not show up in Templater even though you are signed in
The account grant is the broad door; the File Picker grant is the narrow one.
There is also a version requirement. The documentation says that, due to changes in Google security requirements, you must use Templater 3.7 or later to use this integration. The page on linking a worksheet adds that the File Picker workflow was introduced in 3.7 and requires the extra step of authorizing individual Sheets documents. Our documentation does not agree with itself here. The authorization page says 3.7 or later, while one warning on the linking page says 3.5 or later, even though that same page dates the File Picker workflow to 3.7. This page uses 3.7, the figure on the authorization page and on the File Picker workflow note. If you are on anything older than 3.7 and the picker steps below do not match your panel, update first. Our post on the required Templater update for all Google Sheets users explains the update itself.
One more fact worth knowing before you start. Once you have authorized Templater to access your Google Sheets documents, Templater remains signed into your Google Drive account. You do not repeat this every session. The exception is a reset of your After Effects preferences. If your preferences are reset, you need to grant Templater access to your account again. So if a setup that worked last week suddenly shows nothing, ask whether anyone reset After Effects preferences on that machine.
The grant, step by step, with the reason for each step
Here is the procedure as our documentation gives it, with the reasoning added so each click makes sense.
Open the setup dialog. In the Templater panel, in the Batch Assets section, click the Google Drive icon. This opens the Google Spreadsheet Setup dialog. Everything below happens in that dialog and in your browser.
Sign in. Click Sign In. A browser window opens. Log in to the Google Drive account you want to authorize. Choose that account deliberately. If you hold a work account and a personal account, the sheets Templater can see are the ones in whichever account you sign in with here, so make sure the account you sign in with is the one that holds your data sheets.
Allow every permission. Click Allow on any screen that displays the actions and permissions Templater will receive. The documentation is firm that you must allow all of the access requested, or Templater will not be able to use data in your Google Sheets data source. It adds a note worth repeating: these screens can load with checkboxes for various permissions, none of which are selected. Select all the checkboxes before you click Allow. A permission screen with empty boxes and an enabled Allow button invites you to click through. If you do, you grant less than Templater needs, and the failure shows up later as a sheet that will not load.
Confirm in Templater. When the browser redirects to a confirmation screen, switch back to Templater and click Authorize. After the browser confirmation, the documented next step is the Authorize click in the Templater panel.
That completes the first grant. Templater can now talk to your Google account. It cannot yet see any particular spreadsheet.
The File Picker: the second grant
Back in the Google Spreadsheet Setup dialog, under Grant Access to Specific Sheets, click Launch File Picker for Google Drive. Then, in the browser window that opens, click Open File Picker.
In the File Picker dialog, click the drop down menu and filter for Spreadsheets. This narrows the list to Google Sheets documents so you are not scrolling through every file in the drive. Select one or more files you want to use with Templater. You can select multiple consecutive or non-consecutive files using the standard method for your operating system, which means shift-click for a range and command-click on a Mac or control-click on Windows for separate items. Click Select.
Return to the Google Spreadsheet Setup dialog and click Refresh Sheets. Your selections should now appear in the list. This is the confirmation step. Do not skip it, because it is the one place where you see for yourself that the grant took effect before you build anything on top of it.
A hypothetical example makes the order concrete. Say a producer keeps three sheets for a regional promo campaign: one with store names and offers, one with footage paths, and one that she uses only for notes. She signs in, allows all the permissions, clicks Authorize, and launches the File Picker. She selects the first two sheets and leaves the notes sheet alone. Back in the dialog she clicks Refresh Sheets and sees two sheets listed. That is the correct result. The notes sheet is absent on purpose, and Templater has no access to it. If she later decides the notes sheet should drive a render, she goes back through the File Picker and adds it. The documented design is that you grant access to the specific Sheets you want Templater to use.
Two problems are covered in our documentation, and both have a stated fix.
The first is an empty File Picker. If you do not see a list of your Google Sheets in File Picker, repeat the sign-in and permission steps and then open File Picker again. The explanation in the documentation is that you first followed those steps to authorize Templater to access your Google Sheets, and this time you are authorizing File Picker to access them as well. In other words, the picker is its own application and needs its own pass through the permission screens. The repeat is not a sign that something failed the first time. It is the second door.
The second is a list that stays empty after Refresh Sheets. If your selected spreadsheet documents are not listed, try entering the name of the document in the search field and clicking Search. Clicking Clear resets any and all filtering and forces a refresh of the file listing. If a stale filter from an earlier search is hiding your files, Clear is the quickest way to see everything again.
Beyond what the documentation covers, here is a short order of checks that follows from the same two-grant logic. This is general troubleshooting advice, not a documented procedure. Ask which Google account you signed in with, and confirm the sheet lives in that account. Ask whether you ticked every permission checkbox. Ask whether you ran the File Picker step at all. Ask whether the Templater version is 3.7 or later. Ask whether After Effects preferences were reset. Those five questions line up with the five places the documented process can break, and answering them in that order saves time, because the earlier ones are cheaper to check than the later ones.
If you work with more than one Google account, our documentation also lists a separate topic on switching your data source authorization between Google Drive accounts. We have not reproduced its steps here, so check that help page before you try to move a project from one account to another.
The Feed URL, its limits, and who should look elsewhere
Once a sheet is authorized and selected, Templater can show you a Feed URL for it. The documentation explains how to find it. Click the Google Drive icon to the right of the Data field in the Templater panel, to open the Google Sheets Setup panel. Search for and select the Sheet and the Worksheet you want to use. When you select an option in the Worksheet details section, a Feed URL appears that you can copy.
The documented format looks like this:
https://sheets.googleapis.com/v4/spreadsheets//values/''Read it in three parts. The address up to the word spreadsheets is the Google Sheets endpoint. The document key identifies the spreadsheet as a whole. The worksheet name, in quotes at the end, identifies the specific tab. So the Feed URL points at one tab of one spreadsheet, which is why you must choose a Worksheet and not only a Sheet before it appears. Two tabs in the same spreadsheet produce two different Feed URLs that share a key and differ only at the end.
The reason you would copy it is the command line. Templater’s command line interface is configured with a JSON file named templater-options.json, saved in the same directory as the After Effects project file you want to version. In the sample options file in our documentation, the data_source property takes a QUE campaign address, a Google Sheets address, or the path to a tab-delimited file. The documentation lists local JSON and TSV files and Google Sheets documents as data sources the command line can use. The Feed URL is the Google Sheets address you paste into that property, so the unattended run reads the same worksheet you tested in the panel. The command line ships in the Templater Bot edition. Our overview of the Templater Bot covers what that edition does.
A caution follows from the two-grant design. Copying a Feed URL does not authorize anything. It names a worksheet. The sheet still has to be one you granted through the File Picker, using an account Templater is signed into. If a command line run cannot read a worksheet that worked in the panel, check the authorization before you suspect the URL. We have not saved a documented walkthrough of troubleshooting a failed command line read, so we will not guess at error messages here.
The documentation also notes file path syntax for the options file. On Windows, paths use double backslashes. On macOS, they use forward slashes. That detail applies to the paths in the options file, not to the Feed URL, which is a web address and stays as copied.
This setup has real limits, and it is better to state them than to let a team discover them in a rush.
It needs a Google account and a browser at setup time, because both grants happen there. A render machine in a locked-down environment where nobody can open a browser and sign in will not complete the process. Sign in on a machine where you can, then confirm what carries over to the machine that renders. Our saved documentation says Templater remains signed into your Google Drive account, but it does not describe how that sign-in moves between machines, so test it rather than assuming.
The grant covers the sheets you picked, and nothing else. A sheet created tomorrow is not included until you pick it. A team that spins up a fresh sheet for every campaign needs to add the File Picker step to its routine for each one.
There is also a documented restriction on the Bot. Because of changes in the Google Sheets API, the Templater Bot only supports Google Sheets documents created in 2014 or later. If a very old spreadsheet is your source of truth, copy its contents into a new sheet.
If your organization does not allow shared Google access at all, a local tab-separated file or a JSON file avoids the Google sign-in and File Picker steps entirely. Those formats have their own setup steps, which we cover in our guide to the data source types. If you want a data source that several machines and people can draw from, our page on using Google Sheets and QUE together covers that pairing.
Bottom line. Authorization is a one-time setup with two doors. Sign in and allow every permission. Click Authorize in Templater. Launch the File Picker, filter for Spreadsheets, select your sheets, and click Refresh Sheets to confirm. If the picker is empty, repeat the sign-in steps and open it again. If you reset After Effects preferences, do it all again. Once a worksheet is selected, copy its Feed URL when you need the command line to read the same data. Keep the order in mind, and the empty list stops being a mystery.
When the access is working, the next jobs are laying out the sheet and linking a worksheet to your project. Our Templater page and the Learn section point to those, and our post on using a URL feed or JSON file as a data source covers the neighboring feed-based option.
Still stuck on a grant or a URL? These short answers come straight from the steps above.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Templater show no sheets after I sign in to Google?
Signing in is only the first grant. Our documentation describes a second step in a separate application called File Picker, where you grant access to the specific Sheets you want Templater to use. Click Launch File Picker for Google Drive, open the picker, filter for Spreadsheets, select your files, then click Refresh Sheets. If the picker itself is empty, repeat the sign-in and permission steps and open it again, because this time you are authorizing File Picker.
Which version of Templater do I need for Google Sheets?
Our authorization page says that, because of changes in Google security requirements, you must use Templater 3.7 or later to use this integration. The page on linking a worksheet says the File Picker workflow arrived in 3.7. If you are on an older version, update first.
Do I need to authorize again every time I open After Effects?
No. Once you authorize, Templater remains signed into your Google Drive account. The documented exception is a reset of your After Effects preferences. After a reset, you grant Templater access to your account again, so repeat the sign-in and File Picker steps.
What should I do if I click Allow and Templater still cannot read my sheet?
Check that you selected every permission checkbox before clicking Allow. The documentation says you must allow all of the access requested, and the permission screens can load with the boxes unselected. If you granted less, run the sign-in again and tick them all. Then confirm the sheet was picked in File Picker and use Refresh Sheets to see it listed.
Where do I find the Feed URL for a Google Sheet?
Click the Google Drive icon to the right of the Data field in the Templater panel. In the Google Sheets Setup panel, search for and select the Sheet and the Worksheet. When you select an option in the Worksheet details section, the Feed URL appears and you can copy it. It points to one worksheet of one spreadsheet.
What is the Feed URL used for?
In the sample templater-options.json file in our documentation, the data_source property accepts a Google Sheets address. The Feed URL is that address, so a command line run can read the same worksheet you tested in the panel. Copying the URL does not grant access. The sheet must still be one you picked through File Picker.
Can I authorize Templater for more than one spreadsheet at once?
Yes. In File Picker you can select one or more files. Select multiple consecutive or non-consecutive files using the standard method for your operating system, then click Select. Back in the Google Spreadsheet Setup dialog, click Refresh Sheets to confirm they all appear.
