Anonymous Editing in GDocs

[privprov6]

Hello all,

From time to time I notice that the TAGS calc sheet indicates edits made by “anonymous” and I am wondering if this is expected or not, given that the document is not shared with anybody.

Thank you 🙂

[mhawksey]

Hi – there should be no anonymous editing – when the script runs to collect data it runs as you. I’d double check that the file is only accessible to authorized people (if you are ‘sharing with link’ make sure they only have view access)

[privprov6]

Thank you for your reply.

I noticed it does not do that with other docs files I have, but only with the TAGS sheets, and I also changed the password in Google just to stay on the safe side.

I checked the permissions on the files and they are all set on private (I had not touch anything before anyway). The only change I made was on the trigger, to increase the time between triggers (1 to 6 specifically).

Any other idea?

[mhawksey]

I’m wondering if cells with formula which update with new values are recorded as anonymous. When you look at the File > See revision history can you see what cells are edited by anonymous?

[privprov6]

From what I could gather, the cell that is shown more frequently changed is the “type” search/tweet.

In any case, although the spreadsheet says that the edit was “made seconds ago by anonymous” in the revision history every edit always appears as me.

[mhawksey]

Thanks for the additional info. I’ve been able to replicate myself. The type cell is dynamically written by the script (idea was to allow upgrade for other types). This part of the script is actually in a library and it appears the library is recorded as an anonymous user. (if you are interested the line of code that does this is here https://github.com/mhawksey/TwtrService/blob/master/TAGS/Library/TAGS.gs#L225

Hopefully that clarifies things 🙂

[privprov6]

Great to know, and thanks for the explanation. That sorts it out. 🙂

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