Apps Script bug doesn't allow users with multiple accounts to use our add-on

[alekz]

There is a very weird bug that won't let users use our add-on if they have more than one account logged in. It shows a PERMISSION_DENIED error from Google Drive. It's very frustrating because the workaround currently is to log out of all your accounts and then log in with the account you want to use the addon. 

It's already been documented here: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/150247026 but somehow it doesn't get the necessary attention because it's very hard to debug and to know that this is what's happening, but in my opinion this is a blocker issue.

The other proposed workaround for developers is not to use the V8 runtime, but at this point in time that is just not a possibility.

We've been getting more reports of this happening with our add-on and it has been affecting our rating on the Google Workspace Marketplace because people think it's an error on our side and they rate us with 1 star and never come back, and asking them to log out of everything and then log in again is very cumbersome.

Has someone else figured out how to work around this issue in a sensible manner? Or at least experienced it? If so please comment or add support to the issue. 

Thanks!

[alekz]

So apparently this issue is now 5 years old: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/69270374

And officially acknowledged in the documentation: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/projects#fix_issues_with_multiple_google_accounts

Related question on Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60230776/were-sorry-a-server-error-occurred-while-reading-from-s...

But it's users who are actually experiencing this, not developers.

Has someone found a workaround that doesn't require disabling V8 or telling users to log out of all their accounts? 

[ihyzy]

We're facing similar issues and it's very frustrating. 

[may191]

Hey There, 

We experience this exact same issue in our support requests for our add-ons almost daily.  No doubt it is frustrating that Google cannot close this bug for over five years.   These are the tips we are using.

Hack 1 - We did our very best to try and detect if the user is logged in with multiple Google Accounts in the Add-On and then message them about it.  I followed the example code a user outlined here, where they call a function from within the add-on at startup that runs 

Session.getEffectiveUser().getEmail(); and they compare that email to the email that was used during setup or in the userProperties.  This works sometimes.. Maybe 80% of the time but it does not always catch it for some reason. 

Fix 1 (User Education) - So many users are logged into a single Chrome or Safari browser with multiple Google Accounts in that one browser.  We do our best to try and teach them to use Google Chrome and setup Chrome Profiles instead.  If users constantly use more than one Google Account, the best thing they can do is use a separate chrome browser profile for each, this eliminates this Add-On issue of it getting confused as to which user account the Add-On should be interacting with.  This will make their life easier in many other ways too, and is how users should be managing the use of 2 Google Accounts in separate browser instances.  So we explain this in the sidebar and it helps them running into future issues again and again.

[Hhuxx1]

I have same issue, i logged in my phone using my default account it works fine, but when i switch account using another account to access the script using same device it will error. But using incignito tab then access the web app will be asked to login but the web app works just fine. I think the issue is chrome browser it self, when changing account doesnt really deletes the past informations and makes the web app encountered error.

[RaymondE]

Its September of 2024 and the problem still remains.... 😕