"Warning: Some formulas are trying to send and receive data from external parties."

Google Sheets
1

Today when I opened my Tiller Sheet, I got this warning:

Warning: Some formulas are trying to send and receive data from external parties.

How can I determine which formulas are triggering this warning before clicking allow?

I tried search for the formulas listed in this reference, but couldn’t find any:

Thanks!

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2

I hadn’t scrolled far enough down the page I referenced above.

It turns out that the IMAGE function also triggers this warning, and there are definitely instances of the IMAGE function in the sheets.

The Google Sheets warning would be a lot better if it generated a report of which cells are using these functions.

Mystery solved.

3

I’m getting this warning as well.
image

Is there any risk of my data being exported to a third party or something? I’m not comfortable allowing access just yet, will it prevent my spreadsheets from operating correctly?

4

I believe it is just the IMAGE formulas in the sheets, but it would be good if someone from Tiller could confirm or provide direction for how we can audit this ourselves.

Of the formulas on Google’s docs that fall under this new warning, IMAGE was the only one I could find in my foundation sheet + community add-ons.

5

I just got this error today for the first time as well. @heather - any insight here?

6

hi @lions04 and all :slight_smile:

We’re aware of this. It’s due to an update that Google pushed. It’s because our logo is embedded in many sheets in the template using a URL reference (=image) that’s pointing to where the image is stored in our Google cloud storage, which is an “external” location to the Google Sheet.

We will be working to update that in the coming weeks to use a different embed method so that it doesn’t appear anymore.

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7

So have people just removed the image and that goes away?

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8

You can remove the image formula or you can just allow access.

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9

Confirmed; I have removed all IMAGE() calls and the error goes away

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10

Hi Heather, several months later now and I just started getting this error. It looks like there are many “=image” instances in my Tiller file. Disabling them does make the message go away, but I was wondering if the update you refered to was made? It’s odd that I’m just now seeing the warning message.

11

I have also just started seeing this message for the first time in my Tiller sheets

image
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12

hi @mellyagain @jss333 sorry about that, I thought we’d cleaned up all the references to cells where we were using the =image formula but it seems that two spots were missing this. The Yearly Budget and the Balance History sheet, which is hidden by default for most users. It’s just because of our logo so you can just choose “allow” so long as you don’t have any community sheets installed. If you do have community sheets installed you may want to consider temporarily deleting those and then fix the error related to the images and then re-add to see whether those sheets may also be causing the error.

13

Thanks for the info. The curious thing is that I’ve been using this sheet for over a year now and only now I started getting the notification. But anyway, that indicates that something has changed on the Google Sheets side.

14

I saw it on almost every sheet in my foundation template. Do those update automatically, or is it something I have to initiate myself? I’ve been using Tiller for almost a year now, so if it doesn’t automatically update, I guess that’s how old my sheets are!

15

I clicked through all my sheets, removed the “=image” instance where I could see them but I still have this warning message. How do I find the source of this warning if I cannot locate this on my own? Is there an option to search for instances of the “image” tag?

16

I have the same question about this. First time getting this message and I’ve been using over a year.

17

I finally found that last “image=” instance. I’m good now. But wouldn’t mind understanding why or what I should be doing differently to get updates to Sheets as Tiller makes said updates.

18

I am not sure what changed about Google Sheets with why these two instances started the error to show.

We updated the main Foundation template back in March so that new copies would not show this error, but I missed a couple spots in the template where it needed to be updated (:woman_facepalming:) including the Balance History sheet.

However, if you’ve been using it for years I’m not sure why it’s just now showing up for you and that does seem to be a Google Sheets change that happened over the last few days.