Google Sheets

Line breaks with .tsv

Jeff — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 11:54:15 GMT

@chrismeadmore Thanks for reaching out to us. You are 100% correct that we can’t use a /n or /r modifier to insert a line break when using a TSV as a Data Source. Instead, we’ll need to use a special character in conjunction with an After Effects Expression. For this example, we’ll use an asterisk ( * ) in our Data Source to designate where line breaks should be inserted. So, if we wanted text on two lines, the data would look something like this: “Lorem ipsum*dolor sit amet” (with no quotes). Then, we’ll want to add this Expression: thisLayer.text.sourceText.split("*").join("\r"); to the Source Text property of the text layer. This should instruct AE to search the text and replace any asterisks it finds with /r, which should result in a line break. You can change the asterisk to another character if needed, but hopefully, this should get us moving in the right direction. If you have any other questions or if we can help further, please don’t hesitate to reach out here or to our main support at support@dataclay.com. Thanks and Happy Rendering! Jeff

Working with layer parameters from Google sheet

Jeff — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 16:00:14 GMT

@R1ot Working with the Essential Graphics panel and Templater can be a bit daunting at first, as it’s a very unique workflow. Let me see if I can describe how we might set up a project in the way you described, and hopefully, that will be enough to get things moving in the right direction. For this example, I’m going to refer to our main AE comp as “Main Project”. The first thing we’ll want to do is locate the properties we want to adjust and drag them into the Essential Graphics Panel. For this example, let’s say we have an image layer named “picture”. We’ll want to open the Transform section of the properties and drag the “Scale” and “Position” properties into the EGP. Once we’ve got those properties in our EGP window, we’ll want to rename them to something that’s easy to reference in our Google Sheet. For now, let’s rename “Image Scale” to just “scale” and “Image Position” to “position”. From there, let’s create a new comp in AE and edit it so that the name is surrounded with double curly braces, like {{Comp1}}. The double curly braces will instruct Templater that this will be the default comp to process when it comes time to export. After that, we’ll want to drag our “Main Project” comp into the {{Comp1}} comp and rename it. For this example, I’m going to rename this comp to “assembly” (with no quotes). After that, we’ll want to drag the Templater Settings Effect onto our “assembly” comp so that Templater knows which EGP settings to adjust. We can verify that everything is set up correctly by opening the “assembly” comp and confirming that we have both the Templater Settings Effect and an Essential Properties section that contains our scale and position values. Now, we’ll want to head over to our Google Sheet to add the columns to control the data. The names should be formatted like this: layername@[property name]. So, for this example, we’ll want to add a column for our scale property: assembly@[scale], and one for our position property: assembly@[position]. Once that’s done, we’ll need to populate those columns with values. However, if we take a look at the scale and position values in our project, we’ll see that they both contain two values, separated by a comma. That means that the value for those properties is an array, and that will need to be reflected in our data source. So, for example, in our assembly@[position] column, we’ll need to add something like this: [100,100]. That should instruct Templater to set the value for the position EGP property to 100,100. This is a bit counterintuitive when it comes to the scale property, but since AE adjusts the horizontal and vertical scale with two different, matching values, we’ll still need an array for that property as well. Finally, we should be able to preview the {{Comp1}} project and see the results reflected in the Essential Properties values. As a quick side note, this won’t affect the linked properties in the “Main Project” comp, only in the “assembly” precomp in {{Comp1}}. Hopefully, that all makes sense, but if you have any questions, you can let us know here or get in touch with us directly at support@dataclay.com. Happy Rendering!

Google Drive Connector - How to Use Remotely Hosted Google Drive Links with Templater

Jeff — Mon, 19 May 2025 15:05:35 GMT

Hello Everyone,

Later this year, Google is making some changes to the way that their API works with Templater. This change has already resulted in the new File Picker workflow implemented in Templater 3.7.01. However, this update has had an unintended side effect. Because Templater is no longer granted general access to all of the files in Google Drive, it can no longer utilize links to media files contained in Google Drive Accounts.

After investigating the issue, we came up with a workaround that should be implemented into Templater 3.7.2 and later, the Google Drive Media Connector. The upside is that this allows users to create a custom login protocol using Google’s development tools that will grant Templater access to any files in a user-authorized Google Drive. The downside is that the process to get this access up and running can be a bit complicated, so we’ve created this guide to help streamline the process.

Before we get started, a quick note about Google Accounts, the Google Drive Media Connector, and Templater. The account that we use for this process and the account that we use to log in to Google Sheets do not have to be the same account. This means that we can store our Google Sheet data on one account and our media on another. With that out of the way, let’s get started.

To begin, open a browser and navigate to https://console.cloud.google.com

Click on the button to the right of the Google Cloud header. This button may change depending on whether the Google account is part of an organization.

Click NEW PROJECT.

Type a name for the new Project, select an Organization if this option exists, and then click Create.

NOTE: If the account used to set up the Project is part of an Organization and this org is chosen during the setup process, you should only have to login once when authenticating with Templater. However, if the account used is a personal Google Account with no Organization, Google will require that the account re-authenticate with Templater once every 7 days.

Click on Select a project at the top of the window and choose your newly created Project.
Click on the Navigation Menu icon in the upper-left hand corner of the page and choose APIs & Services>Library.

Search for “Drive” in the Search for APIs & Services field and click on Google Drive API. Click ENABLE.

Once the Google Drive API has been enabled, click on MANAGE or click on the Navigation Menu in the upper-left-hand corner and navigate to APIs & Services>Enabled APIs & services. Finally, click on Credentials in the left-hand menu.
From there, click on +Create Credentials and choose OAuth client ID.

Click on “Configure consent screen” to continue.
Add an App name and fill in the email address of the user account that we’ll use to log in. Once those are filled in, click Next.
Under Audience, choose External and then click Next.
Under Contact Information, enter in the Email addresses of the user whose account owns the media assets that Templater will access, and that will be used to authenticate Templater. Click Next.
Finally, check the “I agree to the Google API Services: User Data Policy” checkbox and click Continue.
Finish the process by clicking Create.
On the next screen, click on Create OAuth client

Choose Desktop app for the Application Type and name the client. Once we hit Create, a screen will appear with the Client ID and the Client secret code. These two values are needed to log in to the account using the new Media Connector for Google Drive dialog in Templater, so be sure to record them in a safe place for later.

Click Data Access in the left-hand menu and click Add or remove scopes. Check the first two entries that read “See your primary Google Account email address” and “See your personal info, including any personal info you’ve made publicly available”

Once that’s done, type “Google Drive API” in the “Enter property name or value” field and click on the “Google Drive API” entry with the description that reads “See and download all your Google Drive Files”.

Under the Data Access section verify that the three scopes have been added. The first two should be listed under Your non-sensitive scopes while the third should be under Your restricted scopes. If all the information is present and correct, click on the Save button.
From there, click on the Audience listing on the left-hand side and click on Add users under the Test users section.
Enter the email address that you will use to authenticate Templater’s Media Connector for Google Drive and click Save.

Navigate back to Templater and click on the Preferences button. Click on the Footage tab and click Configure Google Drive.

Enter the Client ID and the Client Secret code that we generated earlier in this process and then click Sign In.

The Sign In process should navigate to a Google login page that will prompt you to choose a Google Account and bring up a warning stating that Google hasn’t verified this app. Hit Continue and then Continue again to sign into the newly created Project.
Finally, we’ll need to check the “See, edit, create, and delete all of your Google Drive files.” option to give Templater full access to any links generated from this Google Drive.

NOTE: If we ever need to retrieve the Client ID or Client Secret code, navigate to console.cloud.google.com. From there, we can click on the Navigation menu in the upper left-hand corner and go to APIs & Services>Credentials. Finally, click on the name of the client under OAuth2.0 Client IDs. This should take us to a screen that contains the Client ID and the Client secret on the right-hand side of the page.

If all goes according to plan, Templater’s new Google Drive Connector should now be connected to the custom Project we set up. This should give Templater and After Effects access to any media links generated from that account.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to post here or get in touch with us directly at support@dataclay.com. We’ll do our best to answer any questions that you might have and help out however we can.

Happy Rendering!

Error with new version after update, linking to google sheets

Jeff — Fri, 09 May 2025 13:12:33 GMT

@megan Thanks for getting in touch with us. We recently identified a bug in Templater 3.7.1 that is almost certainly the cause of this error message. To fix it, we’ll want to open the Templater Preferences, then click “Advanced” and uncheck “Layout engine” and “Time Sculpting”. Next, click on the “Bot” tab in Templater’s Preferences and ensure the “Prevent event script execution on Preview” is enabled. Once that’s done, we’ll want to see if the error persists. If it goes away, we should be able to reenable the “Layout engine” and “Time Sculpting” options. If we continue to see the issue after performing these steps, we’ll probably want to continue this conversation through our support channels, as we’ll likely need to get some log files from the system that might contain information that wouldn’t be appropriate to post publicly. If we end up going that route, you can email us at support@dataclay.com or post a new helpdesk ticket right here. Thanks, Jeff

Importing text paragraphs with different fonts within the paragraph

JakeLumbis — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 13:14:39 GMT

Hi @Jeff, Thanks for the super speedy response! So I tried the expressions in that other link about highlighting text but it didn’t quite work (it was returning Error:“Can’t turn result into numeric value”). But it’s ok as it led me to an alternative but still perfectly effective solution! For more context: We have 13 different risk warnings (set as collumns) for each row of data (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) The way I have set this up is so that I simply change the name of the Risk Warning pre-composition in After Effects from one license to the next (i.e. changing the data collected from one collumn to another in the Google Sheet) which then updates to the correct pre-composition with the correct text (also linked to the spreadsheet.) Each Risk Warning pre-composition now has a text animator with the stroke added individually which was a simply copy/paste job really. Here’s some visuals to help bring my terrible explanation to life: [image: 1725624754817-screenshot-2024-09-06-at-13.12.29.png] Each risk warning is in its own collumn (depending on the request from the marketing team for a particular risk warning we can generate the appropriate text directly in the project file and render a batch of assets for them) [image: 1725624823130-screenshot-2024-09-06-at-13.12.54.png] This pre-composition links to the corresponding collumn in the Google Sheet and changes the Pre-comp based on the collumn we want to use [image: 1725624797552-screenshot-2024-09-06-at-13.13.13.png] Each Pre-comp is set with an animator to create the stroke giving it that ‘bold’ effect (not linked to the spreadsheet as the stroke will not change - only the text within the Google Sheet will change once per quarter (and even then it’s just 2 numbers which won’t affect which words are ‘bold’ and which are not) Thanks for your help! Jake

Error with Google authentication, fails after some time

Fabio Galvão — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 08:13:19 GMT

@Jeff @Jon , Good afternoon, could you tell me a prediction of normalization? I ask this because it is impacting a lot on our workflow. I need to decide whether to redo some internal processes.

Reference Error: texts undefined...

Matt Keyes — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 18:52:14 GMT

In my case the issue was caused by keyframes on the Source Text of a text layer. Removing the keyframes resolved the issue. Thanks to the support team!

Have to reconnect to Google sheets on every restart

Jeff — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 06:37:35 GMT

@rkvalvaa Thanks for the update; that’s quite odd. It’s possible that this might be caused by After Effects holding on to some of the legacy preferences from the previous installation of Templater. Could you try clearing the After Effects preferences using the method outlined on this page and see if that makes any difference in what you’re seeing? Another thing you might try would be to create a new project and see if the issue is limited to previously created After Effects files. We’ve seen some problems in the past with project files storing information from previous versions of Templater/After Effects which might account for what you’re seeing here. Thanks!

Quotation Marks and Apostrophes not displaying in the font style in AE

joevac — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 18:47:35 GMT

@jeff THank you so much - I took the open/closed quotations route and it works fine. Appreciate it! -Joe

Google Sheets pull font style into After Effects

Jeff — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 19:39:50 GMT

@jcreifenberg You can absolutely use Templater to change a layer’s font! It’s a bit tricky, but it basically involves using Templater to bring in data that is referenced by an After Effects Expression. There are a few limitations, but let me see if I can explain the basics. So, for this scenario, we’ll have two layers, “text” and “font”. “Text” will be the layer whose font we want to change “font” will be a text layer populated with whatever font we wish to apply. Once both layers are bringing in data correctly, we’ll want to add an Expression to the Source Text property of the “text” layer. Alt or Option-click on “Source Text” and add this expression: text.sourceText.style.setFont(thisComp.layer("font").text.sourceText); This expression will take whatever is in the “font” layer and apply it to the font property of the “text” layer. So if the “font” layer contained “Arial-BoldMT” (with no quotes), that should change the “text” layer to the font Arial Bold. There are a few limitations to this method of font changing. First, you’ll need to make sure you’re referencing the exact font name, or else AE won’t be able to read the data from the “font” layer. There are a few different ways to get this information, but one easy way is to hit the white and grey “play” button in the Expressions section, choose Text>Font, and then choose the appropriate font/style. Another limitation to this method is that you’re constricted to the font styles that After Effects supports. I did some digging, and it doesn’t appear that AE has strikethrough support in their font engine. If you can find a strikethrough-based font, that should work, but AE doesn’t seem to support that particular style right now. Finally, you might take a look at this entry on Adobe’s website for more information about using Expressions to control Text Properties. There are some other options explored on this page, like Faux Bold or Faux Italics, that might be useful to your project. Many of these options can be controlled using the same Expression logic described above. Hopefully, that’s enough to get you started, but if you have any questions, please feel free to let us know. Thanks!

Using Google Sheet on shared Google Drive

ian.tucker — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 03:28:03 GMT

@jeff That is fantastic. I will test this out today.

Using a script to pull all Google Sheets into one sheet - issues.

Jeff — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 15:36:15 GMT

@UncleMonty That’s quite odd. The OS of the machine running Templater typically shouldn’t make a difference when it comes to getting data from a Google Sheet. Can you give us some more information on the errors that you’re seeing? If you’d like, you can also email our support channel at support@dataclay.com. Let us know what you can, and we’ll take it from there. Thanks!

Templater Pro "Render" renders incorrect info

v_47 — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 20:21:30 GMT

I’ve got a bit of a head scratcher here, I’ve tried everything I can think of but pushing “Render” in the Templater 2 plug in window renders videos with incorrect data in them. Everything in the comp is correct and when I render in manually through the AE render queue it works fine. It seems to be pulling from a different tab on the spreadsheet because the incorrect data it’s populating exists elsewhere in the same sheet. I’ve also tried

Reinstalling After Effects
Reinstalling Templater
Resetting the log
Logging into the spreadsheet again.

No dice, still won’t work. Any tips?

Google Sheets Authorize error

Jeff — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:18:51 GMT

@dwalters The most common cause for the error shown in the screenshot is, more often than not, attempting to authenticate using an older version of Templater. Google made a change to the authentication method that their API uses to grant apps access to Google Sheets last year. Due to this change, previous versions of Templater will no longer be able to sign in to Google Sheets. The first thing I’d try is updating to the latest version of Templater. You can download the installer for Templater Standard (for AE 2022 and above) from this link: https://assets.dataclay.com/Templater3.zip and Templater Legacy (For AE 2021 and below) here: https://assets.dataclay.com/Templater3-Legacy.zip Hopefully, that’s all we should need to get things up and running, but if you run into further issues, just let us know, and we’ll see where we need to go from there. Thanks!

An error with code [ 3 ] ocurred when requesting information from a Google: ScriptError

Jon — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 22:26:16 GMT

@RobAranter Do you have any special characters in the title of your Google Sheet? It could also be something to do with your Google Account, or with the authorization that Templater had previously retrieved. Can you try signing back into the problematic account in the Google Sheets Setup?

Error signing in to google sheets

Jon — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 21:32:12 GMT

@Neil-González Have you added those to the process exceptions list? Is there a separate file blocking area that you can add them to a permanent whitelist? I’m not directly familiar with Trend Micro’s interface.

Bot, and working with Multiple Worksheets

Jeff — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 18:10:33 GMT

Hello, Templater Bot cannot watch multiple sheets simultaneously or switch between sheets once loaded. When you load the sheet data into Templater you’ll pick a worksheet from your data source. The only way to switch that is going to be to reload Templater and choose a different sheet. When it comes to the sort of flexibility you’re describing, you may consider working with a JSON data source instead of a Google Sheet. A JSON file, hosted either locally or remotely, has a great deal of flexibility when it comes to the data in each entry and may work better than a single large spreadsheet. You can check out more information about using a JSON file as a data source here. If there’s anything else we can help you with, please just let us know. Thanks, Jeff

Define composition position based on entry in google sheet

Jon — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 16:08:07 GMT

@vjn86 (and for anyone else reading this later) Yes, you can do this, but you will need to use expressions to accomplish it. You can set numerical values in your data, then map that data to a dynamic text layer in your project. Then, you can use a parseInt() expression to parse the value of the sourceText of the layer into a number that can be used in any numerical value such as position, scale, rotation, etc. See referencing dynamic text layers section.

Utilize multiple sheets within 1 Google sheet?

Jon — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 17:23:28 GMT

@dwalters There are videos demonstrating setting a target as well as switching between project files. For data in expressions, see the link in my previous post under the section “referencing dynamic text layers.”

Google Sheets using image URL instead of the Image name when uploading file

Jon — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 09:51:33 GMT

@eliasnilsson19 How are you locally accessing the files uploaded to the Google Form? Are they being synced back to your computer via Google Drive (File Stream or Backup and Sync)? You would need to build a formula in your Sheet that transposes and concatenates a local file path based on the original file name of the file being uploaded-- the generated URLs for Google Drive are not absolute links, so Templater will fail to download them correctly (Templater can download URLs that are absolute links to the files, ending with a file extension). I’m not certain whether it is possible to get just the filename of the uploaded file via Google Forms, but if it is, that is how you would have to approach it. Outside of that, you’d have to look at a different form builder that can handle the requirement of uploading the file and pushing the absolute URL back into your Sheet. I know that it is possible to do with JotForm, if configured correctly.

Google sheets and dynamic color

dwalters — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 16:14:27 GMT

@ariestav pssshhht, of course it was ridiculously easier LOL Thank you.

Templater bot dont download the images

ariestav — Sat, 28 Sep 2019 15:53:25 GMT

Hi there! How is the file referenced in your data source? And, is the file on a cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive? To be sure the reference must be a direct download and not protected by some kind of sharing service where the actual link might be different from the actual file itself. Further, the reference must contain a file extension for AE to be able to interpret it. We are working on a method to support Dropbox and other sync services like google Drive, but S3 links are supported. Does this help?

looking for individual to show us best set up

robpurefusion — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 19:49:29 GMT

Hello,
We are looking for someone who is experienced at Templater to take 1-2 hours and do a screencast to show us exactly the best practices when linking up google sheets. We are writing the scripts, but the actual linking of google sheets, and proper settings in Templater we need some guidance with.
step 1
step 2
step 3
Sort of thing. Please reach out to me ASAP. Thank you.
$$

Corrupt Templater Downloads

Jon — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 00:36:28 GMT

@danoakes & @rikpare Apologies for the late response, but this is most likely happening if the image URLs don’t point directly to the file (such as a file with URL arguments or one that loads a webpage instead of the file directly-- Dropbox and Google Drive links are examples), if they don’t have a file extension in the URL, or if they are password protected. You can test the URL by opening a private browser window and pasting the URL into the address bar. If the file doesn’t load, it’s probably set to be private. If it loads in a frame (such as with Dropbox and Google Drive), then the URL won’t work. If it’s a matter of the link missing a file extension, if you add the correct file extension to the downloaded file, it will import, as the file is not corrupt, but it’s that After Effects depends upon the file extension to import a file. Any file without a file extension will not import into After Effects.