Invalid image URL - thumbnails work?!

[Shawn Krosnick]

Hello,

I am suddenly getting errors as of yesterday that the image URL is no longer valid when it has been working fine for two weeks. After reading online from some other add-on sites, I tried using a thumbnail and this works. This is too small for the merged document, but at least it works. What is going on and how can I fix it? I have a class of 120 students using this every day and their images are no longer included in the merge. 

This array formula =ARRAYFORMULA(if(row(A:A)=1,"photoid",substitute(K:K,"open?","uc?export=view&")))

But this does for the merged document

=ARRAYFORMULA(if(row(A:A)=1,"photoid",substitute(K:K,"open?","thumbnail?")))

Please help and thank you in advance!

[Robin Sandell]

Hi,

Same thing is happening to me in all of the merges where I use images (signatures). This all started yesterday. The images are public. Yet I continue to get the same error.
Merge Error Message: Invalid image URL [https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILEID], make sure that it is public."

You can see in the error message the formula used.  The images are still visible using the IMAGE function. Nothing has changed there. Also, this formula has been working for years with no issues and stopped for all images in all jobs in all GSheets. I believe this is going to impact everyone who is using images in their merges no matter which browser they are using. 

I am using Chrome (it is up to date). I tried the same merge in Safari and had the same issue. I think it may have something to do with privacy updates that all browsers are implementing.

E.G., same-site and cross-site cookies: https://blog.chromium.org/2019/10/developers-get-ready-for-new.html

I substituted this formula https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=FILEID for the old one https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILEID and the images were back in the merged document. I don't know how long this fix will work, as Chrome is going to do major privacy updates this month, which may impact it again.  

I would like to see if the developers at CloudLab could take a look at it and respond. I sent an email to them and will post responses if I get one.

Thanks to all in advance for assistance.