Resolving Issues Authenticating SA360 Web Queries In Excel

Search Ads 360 web queries are a phenomenally useful feature. For the most part, they are easy to use and enable a broad number of users to set up complex reporting workflows for themselves.

A frustration that several people, including myself, have encountered over the past few months is that it’s become effectively impossible to sign in to your Google account within the Excel mini-browser you use to create a web query connection in your sheet. What we saw were a number of script error dialogs and then a message from Google saying we were using an insecure browser.

Historically, if you weren’t able to sign in within the Excel mini-browser, you could just sign in to your Google account in Internet Explorer. The Excel mini-browser, being an instance of Internet Explorer, would just inherit this authenticated state and let you pull in your web query report.

It’s been a frustrating problem to figure out, but earlier today—while working with a friend to resolve it—we discovered what seems to be the consistent solution. If you have the patience to trawl through things, you’ll find it mentioned in this forum thread as well.

Make sure you have closed all Excel windows. Pull up “Internet Options” from the Internet Explorer settings menu. In the “Security” tab, uncheck the box for “Enable Protected Mode”. Click “Apply” and close the window. Then relaunch Internet Explorer. After you do so, if you’re not already signed in to your Google account, do so in Internet Explorer. You should now be able to create and refresh web queries in Excel without issues.