Don't get frustrated yet! Here's a compilation of working solutions for debugging data source errors. Check out this article to find out why and start troubleshooting!

Debugging is Painful 😭

Google Data Studio (GDS) Error Message is often unclear. It doesn’t help much in the error debugging process, except for making us feel more frustrated!

I have encountered a few errors related to Data Source Connection. I had to dig through a lot of Stack Overflow posts,Data Studio Community Posts and Reddit to look for the information and solutions.

This is indeed a painful experience, so I want to help you to find answers to your Data Studio problem easily.

Introduction

In this post, I would organize and compile a list of error messages related to data source configuration, the possible reasons you hit that annoying error, and the recommended ways to get rid of the issue.

Disclaimer: Some of the solutions are provided by the community, I’d link to the source for your reference.

How to Debug?

When you encountered the data source configuration error, you would see "Data Set Configuration Error", "Data Studio cannot connect to your data set". These are what I called “Surface” error message because they don’t provide you any clue to the underlying issue.

To debug the error, expand See details to read the more detailed explanation.

Common Errors

Based on my personal experience, there are 2 common types of data source configuration error messages we may encounter in Data Studio:

1. Failed to Fetch Data from the Underlying Data Set

2. The Underlying Data has Changed. Please Notify the Data Source Owner to Refresh.

Error 1: Failed to fetch data from the underlying data set.

❗Possible Reasons for Hitting the Error

1. First, the report has lost its access to the data source. One of the common scenarios is that the data source owner’s account is being terminated or the account is being removed.

2. Second, the report is unable to read the data source due to incorrect data type settings.

💡 Recommended Solutions

1. Ensure that the data source owner still has the access to read the underlying data. You can change the data source credentials to yours or anyone who has the access if the person is no longer in your organization. Just make sure the account used for the data source connection has the permission level or authorization to the underlying data source. One good point brought up from Wey Gu is that to run a query from BigQuery, one needs to be granted the BigQuery Job User role as the IAM roles.

2. Try reconnecting the data source. Go to Manage Added Data Source > Edit< > Refresh Connection.

3. Check if the data source schema is set up correctly. If not, make sure you select the correct one that reflects the data type. For example, if your underlying data is text, make sure the same data type is chosen in the Data Type settings. Trying to read a text as a numeric data type can cause a problem for Data Studio Connector to read the data properly.

4. If #3 still doesn’t solve your issue then investigate the underlying data source. Is the data source data type has changed without you knowing? Try to pull out a distinct set of values in the dataset to validate this.

On a side note, I have seen some comments in Data Studio Community that changing the code>RegExp formula to Contains formula solves their problem.

While I don’t believe in changing things or code blindly just to make things work, I’m including this info here in case you find it useful.

Error 2: The Underlying Data has Changed. Please Notify the Data Source Owner to Refresh.

❗ Possible Reasons for Hitting the Error

I encountered this error when I am connecting Google Sheet to GDS. This error occurs right after I added an extra column in Google Sheet. Refreshing the connection does not help to solve the problem.

💡 Recommended Solution

Adding a new data source for the same Google Sheet eliminates the annoying error message.

Note: I’ll be updating this article if there’re any new error message / findings / solutions. If you wish to contribute to this list to help others that struggle with GDS, do reach out to me. Your contribution to the community is very much appreciated ❤️