Hi friends,

There’s an open bug report regarding the error of "You do not have permissions to open this file in the browser." I have added your contact information to the open bug report. We will keep you updated via email once there’s an update regarding the bug.

I appreciate your patience and understanding.

Having the same problems, since Saturday, 16th of March. Didn't changed anything in my configurations… :( 

I have just tried creating another zap from scratch.  It connects to the Microsoft account ok and I can select the spreadsheet to use.  However the next dropdown is to select which worksheet to use and it can’t find any results:

Hi friends,

This might be a bug here. I’d recommend reaching out to our Support Team to report this issue and create a bug report on your behalf.

You can reach our Support Team here: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

I appreciate your patience and understanding.

Still no update team - there must be multiple posts now advising of excel issues.  This is a show stopper for me and has been since early may. 

Surely this means anything excel related isnt working at the moment.  

I really really really dont want to move sheets.  Ive had these zaps working fine with excel for over a year (on a daily basis!!)

Unfortunately there is no Worksheet ID in the URL - I selected both worksheets separately in the spreadsheet and copied/pasted the URL but it is identical for both.

Incidentally I did see something when searching for a solution about clearing the browser cache, but this wouldn’t apply as Zapier is not connecting through my browser, but maybe some sort of cache could be cleared on the Zapier side.

I tried removing the Zapier permissions from excel and then reconnecting to the Excel account in Zapier again, which added the permissions back again, but this made no difference.

Hi there @Gareth Bishop,

Could you please try using the Worksheet ID in the “Worksheet” field as a custom value? You should see the Worksheet ID in the browser URL of the Microsoft Excel app when the desired worksheet is selected.

I'll be keeping an eye out for your response!

Hi,

I’ve been having the same problem (“You do not have permissions to open this file in the browser”) on every Zap step that uses Excel - all have worked fine and nothing has changed in any settings and it’s the same for any new Excel account and / or file that I try.

Zapier support haven’t been able to resolve it yet.

Anyone get theirs working in the end?

Thanks,

Jon

I am having the same issue here 

Hello everyone,

I'm utilizing a Google Apps Script to retrieve data from an Excel file situated in my OneDrive account, and I'm encountering a similar issue.

Exception: Request failed for https://graph.microsoft.com returned code 401. Truncated server response: {"error":{"code":"FileOpenUserUnauthorized","message":"You do not have permissions to open this file in the browser.","innerError":{"code":"unautho... (use muteHttpExceptions option to examine full response)

Same here.  Nothing has changed on my end and suddenly all my zaps started failing.  SO FRUSTRATING!!  

Hi there @Gareth Bishop,

Welcome to the Community!

Before we dig deeper into this, could you please try reconnecting your Microsoft Excel account here: https://zapier.com/app/connections/excel

After that, please publish the Zap again and check if the error will persist.

Kindly give it a try and let me know how it goes? I'll keep an eye out for your response!

I am in the same boat; it was the main reason our business got the subscription. I've found that it does work relatively the same with google sheets (but not exactly) you just set it up the same way as you would with excel but with sheets (personally this was not ideal us because we need it in excel for other reasons but it does work). 

Also just want to let you know, there’s been no updates from the open bug report on this issue yet.

@ken.a and @SamB 
How is this still an open bug for one of the most popular Zap apps?

Confirming I had encountered this bug today when trying to troubleshoot an issue with a client’s Zap related to Excel.

What is happening here? 
its very frustrating we cant work with excel :-(

Hi @ken.a ,

I have tried reconnecting the Excel account as suggested - it worked fine but when I went to turn the zap on again, it failed with the same error.

I tried going into Excel and specifically sharing the spreadsheet with the user - although the account I am using is the spreadsheet owner, so I can’t see how there would be any permissions issues accessing it.  It still failed with the same error when I tried to turn it on again.

Zapier is listed as an app that I have given access to in Excel, with full read/write/edit/detele permissions and nothing has changed there.

Thanks,

Gareth

Sorry you’re also being affected by this @natesheets. I’ve added you to the bug report as well so that we can notify you once it’s been resolved.

As has been mentioned earlier in this thread this issue is not limited to Zapier, and appears to be caused by a change on Microsoft’s end that’s surfacing these errors for workbooks on consumer OneDrive accounts.

However, as Connor mentioned, if you’re seeing these errors with workbooks stored on a OneDrive Business account, Group drive, or Sharepoint account please can you reach out directly to our Support team here to flag this. That will allow them to obtain the error logs for your affected Zaps so we can share these with the Microsoft team for further investigation.

Hi ​@rob098,

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Kindly reach out to our Support team directly so they can investigate this further and open up a new bug report if needed. You can do that here: https://zapier.com/app/get-help.

UGH. Seeing that this has been an issue for months and is still unresolved is maddening. It stopped working for me today, randomly. Please add me to the list to be notified when it is fixed, but in the meantime I’ll need to look into alternatives to Zapier because my livelihood depends on this working. 

Hi everyone,

Connor from Zapier’s Support Engineering team here. I apologize for the sparse updates, and I really appreciate your patience we as we’ve dug into this.

As @SamB mentioned above, this issue is not limited to Zapier and its cause looks to be a change on Microsoft’s end, apparently related to the account on which the worksheet is stored—specifically consumer OneDrive accounts.

At this time we’re unable offer an ETA on the resolution. However, we are working with Microsoft to better understand the issue and the path forward.

Here is the most recent update from Microsoft:

We are working on a mitigation but unfortunately have no timelines to share at this point.
According to our investigation, this issue only happens for Workbooks stored in OneDrive Consumer platform. Please note Workbooks stored in OneDrive Consumer platform are not officially supported by Excel Graph...We recommend you to use Excel workbooks stored in OneDrive for Business, SharePoint site or Group drive if you would like use Excel Graph with full support.

If you’re currently experiencing this error with a OneDrive Business account, Group drive, or Sharepoint account, please let our Support team know.

We appreciate your understanding, and we’ll continue to do everything we can to push for a solution here. We will keep this thread updated with more information as we receive it.

Hi @tomo 

Thanks for taking the time to share this candid feedback with us. I’m sorry the Support you’ve had on this so far has not been as good as it should have been. I’ve passed your comments here over to the relevant teams so that we can improve upon the information and communications shared regarding bugs in future. I can see that the Support team have already added you to the bug so we’ll definitely reach out to you, and everyone else who’s being affected by this, as soon as it’s been resolved on Microsoft’s end.

To clarify, we are not in any way trying to push folks towards using a paid add-on for Zapier Tables. This issue is not exclusive to Zapier. Microsoft’s own API needs to be fixed in order for the Microsoft app integration that uses it to resume working correctly, unfortunately this isn’t something we can fix from our side. 

I understand how frustrating this must be for everyone here and I would recommend setting up an interim workaround of moving a copy of your affected Excel workbooks over to a different spreadsheet app and use the alternative app instead for the time being. Then later once the issue has been resolved you can move back to using Excel. We have a number of different spreadsheet apps available (doesn’t have to be Zapier Tables!) which you can view here: https://zapier.com/apps/categories/spreadsheets. I do hope that helps to get your workflows up and running again in the meantime.

Thanks for everyone's ongoing patience and understanding on this. As soon as we get any updates on the situation I’ll be sure to let you all know here!

This is a joke

This bug is messing up my automation for many months already. Had to do task manually, which can cause errors.

I am behind some of my admin tasks because of it.

The reply is the same, and has not changed for months. One of the most popular software, and widely used is completely ignored. My guess: the paid add-on of Tables they want you to use as much as possible instead of excel.

Zapier support is taking a right on pi$$ with this. And not only with this one. NONE of the bugs I reported has been resolved.

Shame on you Zapier. Tech support : 0-10!

I have already scaled down my integrations using Zapier and will be looking to migrate to a different integration software.

Hi @cbc 

Thanks for the update.  So just to confirm the Microsoft API is causing all EXCEL/ZAPIER integrations to have issues ? 

As I understand it, these errors are caused by an issue with the Microsoft’s API itself, not the Microsoft Excel app integration on Zapier. I’d expect folks using Microsoft Excel’s API independent of Zapier would also be running into similar issues. 

There is no workaround at the moment apart from using SHEETS ?

Google Sheets isn’t the only alternative. You could can see the full list of other spreadsheet-type of apps available to use with Zapier here: https://zapier.com/apps/categories/spreadsheets. 

How long do these things usually take to resolve? 

There isn’t a set amount of time that it usually takes. Issues can vary greatly in complexity and it’s not always clear how long they will take to resolve. The issue itself will need to be fixed on Microsoft’s end so it might be worth reaching out to them directly to see if they are able to offer any insight on how long they expect a fix to take.

 Also its been unclear also about the start date of these problems?  Was it indeed May ? It was MAY for me - but others have mentioned april/march etc ?

I don’t have a confirmed date for when it began. But this Community thread was started back in February so it appears it was earlier than May.

Looking at the Microsoft Q&A site it seems others are running into similar errors here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1688063/error-401-fileopenuserunauthorized-graph-api. It was noted in the thread there that this issue was occurring for worksheets on personal OneDrive accounts. So I did some further digging and according to the documentation on Microsoft's API here it can be used to read/modify Excel workbooks stored in a OneDrive for Business, SharePoint site or Group drive - there’s no mention of personal OneDrive accounts. Perhaps this wasn’t always the case and is why now seeing these errors in cases where Zaps were working previously? 

Can anyone in the thread here confirm whether these “You do not have permissions to open this file in the browser” errors are also occurring for workbooks on a OneDrive for Business, SharePoint site or Group drive?

Hi @cbc and @yasinyaso,

I’m very sorry about the frustrations caused by this issue, I’ve just checked on the bug report again and it’s still unresolved. I can’t make any promises around when it will be fixed but you both will definitely be notified by email once it is.

To clarify, these “You do not have permissions to open this file in the browser” errors are due to an issue with the Microsoft’s API itself so it’s not just the Microsoft Excel app on Zapier that is being affected here. This means that the issue with Microsoft’s API will need to be resolved on Microsoft’s end to get things working again. Our team is in communications with Microsoft and we’ll do all we can from our side to help in get this resolved. Thanks for everyone’s continued patience on this in the meantime.