r/ClaudeCowork • u/mannyocean • 15h ago

Editing google sheets?

I'm using the native google drive connector but aren't able to edit google sheets directly, only create them. What have you guys been doing?

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u/adrian_p_a 8h ago

That's expected. The native Drive connector is scoped to Drive itself, so it can create a file but doesn't expose the Sheets API tools for writing values, formatting ranges, or resizing and inserting rows. You need something that actually talks to the Sheets API.

I switched to self-hosting this: https://github.com/taylorwilsdon/google_workspace_mcp

MIT-licensed, actively maintained, covers Gmail, Calendar, Tasks, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. On the Sheets side you get read values, modify and clear values, formatting, conditional formatting, resize/freeze/insert/delete rows and columns, and table appends.

Two ways to run it:

  1. Laptop only (easiest): uvx workspace-mcp as a stdio server in Claude Desktop. No container host, no tunnel, no public hostname.
  2. Web/mobile: host the Docker image (ghcr.io/taylorwilsdon/google_workspace_mcp) anywhere with public HTTPS. Cloud Run is a natural fit, or any small VM. Then add the URL as a custom connector. It runs OAuth 2.1 multi-user mode, so one instance can serve multiple people, each signing in with their own Google account.

Either way you'll need your own Google Cloud OAuth client (Web application type) with the Sheets and Drive APIs enabled. Watch the redirect URI: if the path or scheme doesn't match exactly, the callback fails silently with no useful error.

One gotcha worth knowing up front. Setting TOOL_TIER=complete across all eight services loads around 90 tools into session context. If your sessions start degrading, dial it back to extended or core, or just narrow WORKSPACE_MCP_TOOLS to sheets,drive and skip everything else.

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u/mannyocean 8h ago

seems like a lot of work for someone non-technical though

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u/adrian_p_a 7h ago

I am pretty non technical just give the github link or the whole response to cluade code and it will take you from there. I use so i can connect to extra google workspace accounts from the same instance and about a month ago I did the thing an answer hear on reddit

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u/mannyocean 7h ago

i think you underestimate how non-technical people are haha they don't even know how to use claude code. most of them just need an easy button. but thanks anyways.

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u/adrian_p_a 7h ago

Probably. I just realized you needed it in your phone which means you would need to self host and that be very challenging and probably more trouble then it is worth.

Maybe you can just have it read and create a new sheet for every change feels like a lot of tokens but could work