LibreOffice access to Google Drive asks for authentication 6-digit pin

I saw the ‘Open Remote File’ option today for the first time and decided to try it as I have files on Google Drive. I do have 2FA enabled so I was not surprised to get authentication from my phone but it does not provide me with a code. Instead it just asks me to confirm that I am logging in from another computer. As LibreOffice will not proceed without the code, even though the 2FA worked, I am stuck. Any suggestions?

@JoeH1 See my answer on this post. Has worked repeatedly for me.

thanks @Ratslinger this also worked for me :slight_smile:

Joe this worked for me until I enabled 2-step authorization. now get a “General Input.output error”

When I put in the 6 digit pin from the GOOGLE Authenticator App I get : The specified device is invalid

this worked for me. set up 2 step verification on google and make it send a code to your phone via text. now when i access my google drive in libre office it sends a 6 digit code to my phone and i put that into the box, that’s it.

I too need some help! I am unable to configure LibreOffice to get and save to GoogleDrive. It keeps on referring to the “Google Drive asks for authentication 6-digit pin” but no pin is sent/received. I have tried with and without Google’s 2-Step Verification, but no luck. I see a number of online forums highlight this. Is there any possibility this will be able to be configured and work? I rely heavily on saving and editing documents on GoogleDrive locations and using LibreOffice. GoogleDoc has a few limitations for me. Any guidelines will help.

I need help too. I can’t get Libreoffice to connect to Google drive without it asking for the 6 digit authentication code. Looks like from what I understand that it will be coming in a new upgrade in the future, how long does that usually take? I need to save things to the cloud I don’t trust my computer, had them die too many times not willing to loose data again, libreoffice is very good, but this part is not, I am a new user and am impressed up until this. hoping for a fix really soon or I may have to move on to something else.

Hello, today April 6 2019. LibreOffice 6.2.2.2 running on Linux Mint 19.1.

Problem still not solved. Cannot access Google Drive account from LibreOffice, as expected.
LibreOffice ask me for a 6-digit pin code, but Google did not send any code to my smartphone.
I had tried with and without the 2-step verification… no success anyway.
.
Could the developers devote some extra time to solve this problem ? It affects a lot of users
Thanks,
Giovani , Brazil

Hello
Just updated my libreoffice to version 6.3.0.4. the latest version i can find primarily because i couldn’t get the remote files access to google drive.
Guess what, still doesn’t work. Google has my phone number for 2FA but there is no 6 digit code no matter how much i try. I have even got google drive on my PC to appear on the PC explorer pane. When i open the LO writer the folder appears in the file directory but when i click to open it says - ‘drive is unavailable… make sure you connected to the internet, etc.’ So useless. Just can’t get it to work.
Agree with all the users above. Why complicate things, used to work perfectly in the past. Will it ever be fixed? seems issue has been going on for a long - long time, about time it got fixed.
Ron

I just upgraded to 6.3.3.2-2.x86_64 (Fedora Core 30 Linux) and I cannot still says “Invalid Drive”. Somewhere in this thread someone said special characters trigger this error, but they did not say what the special characters were, and I cannot remember whether it was for the user name or the password. My Google user name is ben dot pracht at gmail dot com. I tried it without 2FA, and it asks for the pin. I set up 2FA using Google Auth, and it still asks for the pin. When I have a 6 digit number from the Google Authenticator app and type that in, it says the “Specific Device is Invalid”. Is it possible to have it not ask for this pin? Is Google Drive just impossible to work with?

I just upgraded to 6.3.3.2-2.x86_64 (Fedora Core 30 Linux) and I cannot still says “Invalid Drive”. Somewhere in this thread someone said special characters trigger this error, but they did not say what the special characters were, and I cannot remember whether it was for the user name or the password. My Google user name is ben dot pracht at gmail dot com. I tried it without 2FA, and it asks for the pin. I set up 2FA using Google Auth, and it still asks for the pin. When I have a 6 digit number from the Google Authenticator app and type that in, it says the “Specific Device is Invalid”. Is it possible to have it not ask for this pin? Is Google Drive just impossible to work with?

Well, I have the same problem with a newly installed latest version 6.3.1.2.

Google offers to let me create a FOUR digit pin, which I didn’t have. But LibreOffice asks for a SIX digit pin.

And doesn’t get Google to send me a 2FA code either.

So I’m stuck.

And connection to OneDrive doesn’t work either, for an unexplained reason, although Microsoft have emailed me twice to say the LibrOffice has been added as an authorised app.

Hello,

It continues to surprise me how many people continue to ask a question (or post a comment) as an answer. Please use answers only to respond to original question. Otherwise search other questions and if answer is not found either ask a new question (this one already asked many times) or post as a comment.

Google Drive and One Drive have not worked for some time. No one (to my knowledge) has undertaken a fix to either. Please see answer by @anon73440385 and comments in this post for Google Drive → Libre office remote files with google authenticator code (six digital pin)

Very sorry - I thought I had clicked on ‘Add a comment’ but it then appeared as an Answer, which of course it isn’t. My mistake, and my apologies.

Thanks for the response. It just amazes me how often this actually happens.

This worked for me. It all has to do with Google apparently. This is what I do to solve Libreoffice’s login into Gdrive on my computer. I run DEBIAN 10

  1. Go into GMail
  2. Go to MANAGE YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT (it’s right upper corner under the icon for your account)
  3. Go to SECURITY
  4. SECURE ACCOUNT
  5. SECURITY ISSUES FOUND - I found Libreoffice listed here
  6. Grant access to Libreoffice (it will ask if you are sure - say YES)
  7. Make sure under Signing in to Google you signin the old fashion way, no phone, no 2 step verification. Plain email and password signin
  8. Turn on Less secure app access
  9. Make sure you are auto signing in into your ONLINE ACCOUNTS in your computer.
  10. I had to reboot to have everything working

Can someone verify if this works. I will be trying this on my work’s computer this week also. Let you know

Still doesn’t work.

I ran into this in RollApp.com when I tried to run the Libre Office Writer app there.

Solution

  1. select my RollApp profile (by clicking on my username in the upper right of rollapp.com)

  2. Select Cloud Storage in the shortcut menu

  3. In the right pane user Connect New Storage, click Google Drive and go thru the setup process

Now I can see and open LO documents using RollApp’s LibreOffice apps.

On linux it turns out you can just use gnome’s online accounts to connect to google (and i suppose KDE has a version too). The drive will appear in your file manager (file aka nautilus) as youraccountname@gmail.com. You can then use the ‘normal’ way of opening all your files located on your google drive.

I was puzzled by this too. I do not want to give my phone number to google, then what? Would be nice if a user can choose which authentication method to use in the first place and that libreoffice is just recognizing the gnome online accounts already created and lists them automatically in the remote services.

One thing I noticed. I cannot open files from the filemanager directly by double clicking a file as the google-drive file format was not recognised.
I can open them via libreoffice directly