What can an AI agent do with
Edit all Google Sheets?
The agent can open, create and edit every Google Sheets spreadsheet you have. Access covers the whole spreadsheet, not just one tab.
How to spot it
On a Google Workspace connection or settings screen, this is https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.
With it, an agent can
- Read the data in any of your spreadsheets
- Create new spreadsheets
- Change or clear cell values
- Add or delete tabs, rows and columns
It cannot, on its own
- Open other Drive files such as PDFs or Word documents
- Share a spreadsheet with other people through this permission alone
What a bad day looks like
A confused agent could overwrite numbers in your bookkeeping or price sheets, and small changes are easy to miss.
Set it up safer
- Ask whether it can use https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file so it only touches spreadsheets you pick.
- If it only reads, ask for https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.readonly.
- Give it a copy of an important sheet instead of the original.
Narrower permissions on Google Workspace:
- Only files you pick or it creates
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file - View all Google Sheets
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.readonly
Ask the company selling the agent
- Which spreadsheets will it change?
- Can it work only on sheets I pick?
- Does it keep a record of every cell it changed?
Source
Checked against Google Workspace documentation on 2026-09-28. All Google Workspace permissions →
Thinking about a specific agent?
Tell us what it connects to, what it is allowed to do and who approves its work. You get a plain-language label of what it can touch and what to ask the seller. It takes a couple of minutes, and your answers stay in your browser unless you choose to post a test job.
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This page explains what a permission allows. It does not describe, test or rate any product. Permission details are summarized in our own words from the provider's documentation, linked on the page; providers change their documentation, so check the source before you rely on a detail.