Sheets API protected range fails with 'grid with id: 1 not found' error

Other Questions Google Sheets
1

I keep running into this error when trying to create protected ranges using the Google Sheets API. The error message says Invalid requests[0].addProtectedRange: No grid with id: 1.

I’m not sure what’s causing this. Maybe it’s the same problem others have faced with grid IDs not being found.

Here’s my code:

def create_protection_rules(sheet_id):
    sheets_service = initialize_service()
    
    protection_requests = [
        {
            "addProtectedRange": {
                'protectedRange': {
                    "range": {
                        "sheetId": 1,
                        "startRowIndex": 0,
                        "endRowIndex": 0,
                        "startColumnIndex": 0
                    },
                    "description": "Header row protection",
                    "warningOnly": True
                }
            }
        }
    ]
    
    request_body = {
        'requests': protection_requests
    }
    
    result = sheets_service.spreadsheets().batchUpdate(
        spreadsheetId=sheet_id,
        body=request_body
    ).execute()

Any ideas what might be wrong here?

2

u should double-check if there’s a tab with sheetId 1 in the sheet. Sometimes they get out of sync. Maybe run spreadsheets().get() to see the real sheetIds and update ur code accordingly.

3

The sheetId is for the specific worksheet tab, not the whole spreadsheet ID. New Google Sheets start with sheetId 0 for the first tab, not 1. I ran into this exact problem last month and wasted hours on it. You’ve got to grab the actual sheetId from your spreadsheet metadata first. Google assigns these IDs automatically - they can be any integer and won’t be sequential if you’ve added or deleted worksheets. Try switching your sheetId to 0 and see if that fixes it. Even better, use the spreadsheets().get() method to fetch the correct ID programmatically instead of hardcoding it.

4

Had this exact same issue on a data validation project. Yeah, it’s the sheetId reference, but here’s what really got me - when you create a new spreadsheet through code, the default sheet sometimes gets a random ID instead of 0. I had to fetch the spreadsheet metadata first and pull the sheetId from the sheets array. You’ll find it at response[‘sheets’][0][‘properties’][‘sheetId’] for the first tab. Another thing - if you’re using an existing spreadsheet where someone renamed or moved tabs around, the sheetId won’t be what you think it is. I always grab these IDs and store them in variables instead of hardcoding. Saves tons of debugging headaches.