Connected Accounts give you the option to display Google Slides, Sheets, and Docs in Carousel without copying share links or publishing files to the web. Once you connect a Google account, you can browse the files in that account directly from the bulletin editor, and Carousel keeps your displays in sync as you make changes in Google.
Please Note:
The specific permissions we require to gain access to your Google account are shown below under the heading ‘Connecting Your Account’, in the screenshot for step 3
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If you receive an error after clicking the orange 'Connect' button in Carousel Cloud to complete the Google account connection process for a managed (work/school) Google account, it is most likely the case that a setting in your Google Admin console is preventing access.
Since we are not Google admins, we are unable to provide any specific guidance for what you'd need to configure in order to resolve this type of issue.
What You Can Show
Google Slides — full presentations or slide decks.
Google Sheets — an entire sheet, a specific cell range, a named chart, or a named range. You can choose to hide gridlines.
Google Docs — a document for display as a multi-page bulletin.
When you create a bulletin, you pick the file from a searchable list of everything in the connected account — no need to set per-file sharing or paste links.
Requirements
A Google account (free or Google Workspace) that can open the files you want to display.
If your organization uses Google Workspace with admin-managed third-party app controls, your Workspace administrator may need to allow Carousel before you can connect an account. If the sign-in window says something like your admin has blocked access, you will need to contact your IT team.
The person connecting the account needs to keep the Google login active. Revoking Carousel's access from your Google security settings will end the connection until you reconnect.
How it Works
Carousel periodically checks Google for changes. Edits you make in Slides, Sheets, or Docs automatically appear on your displays.
Sheets and Docs are always shown as snapshots — captured images that refresh at scheduled intervals. Snapshots are reliable and look consistent across players.
For Slides bulletins, you can choose between snapshots (the default) and live display. Live is only needed when you have animations or transitions in your slides that you want to play on screen. This will require you to have enabled File → Share → Publish to Web or made the presentation publicly shared to “Anyone With the Link” in the Google user interface.
Connecting Your Account
Please Note: You can connect multiple Google accounts (for example, a personal Gmail account and a Google Workspace account). When editing a bulletin, you choose which connected account to pull from.
Go to User Settings > My Connected Accounts > Add Account
From the drop-down list, choose Google, name the account in Carousel as needed, and then click Connect.
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A Google sign-in window opens. Sign in and approve the permissions Carousel requests — it needs read access to your Slides, Sheets, and Docs to display them.
If the pop-up Google window displays a checkbox for permissions, you must check the box for Carousel to gain access to your Google account.
The account appears in your list, ready to use in any Google Slides, Sheets, or Docs bulletin.
Re-authenticating
In rare cases, Carousel may lose access to your Google account — typically because access was revoked, the refresh token expired, or was invalidated.
When this happens, you can fix the connection from either of two places:
From the bulletin editor. Bulletins using the account will show an error: "This connected account has an error and needs to be re-connected." A Re-Connect Here button appears next to the account — click it, sign in to Google again, and the bulletin returns to normal. Your file selection and bulletin settings are preserved through the reconnect — you don't have to rebuild anything. (If the file you previously chose is no longer accessible to the reconnected account, you'll be prompted to pick a new one.)
From Settings > My Connected Accounts. The account will be flagged with an error. Open the account from that list and use the edit option to sign in to Google again.
When the Account Owner is Removed From Carousel
A Connected Account is owned by the Carousel user who created it. If that user is later removed from your Carousel site, their Connected Accounts are removed as well.
Any bulletin that was using one of those accounts will go into an error state and stop playing — it won't fall back to the last snapshot, and it won't keep running until someone fixes it. To restore the bulletin, another user needs to:
Connect their own Google account under My Connected Accounts (if they don't already have one).
Open the affected bulletin and assign the new connected account to it.
As long as the new account has access to the same file, no further changes are needed — the bulletin picks up where it left off. If the new account can't see the original file, you'll be prompted to choose a different one.
There's no way to "transfer" a Connected Account from a deleted user — each account is tied to the person who set it up. We recommend that the file you display in Carousel be owned or shared with more than one person on your team, so a colleague can step in and bring the bulletin back online quickly if the original owner leaves.
Additional Information and Troubleshooting
"The previously selected presentation/spreadsheet/document is no longer accessible with this connected account." The file was deleted, moved to a folder the connected account can't see, or its sharing was changed. Choose a different file or restore access in Google.
Your account shows an error icon. From inside a bulletin, click Re-Connect Here to sign in again. From My Connected Accounts, edit the account to sign in again.
Edits in Google aren't showing on the player. Carousel checks for updates every 15 minutes, not instantly. If the change still doesn't appear after that, confirm the file is still in the connected account and that the account isn't in an error state.
Older share-link bulletins. If you have a bulletin created before Connected Accounts existed, it may show a notice that it uses the older Google Slides format. Create a new bulletin to use Connected Accounts.
Google Rate Limits: Google has rate limits for rendering slides and pages at 60/minute/user. We do our best to render content intelligently so that your content appears quickly and accurately. If you are using one account to display a lot of long presentations, there could be a slight delay in rendering to account for the rate limits.
File moved to trash in Google: If you simply move a file to the trash in Google, your Google bulletin will still continue to play on your Carousel Cloud players. If you fully delete the file from your trash in Google, the bulletin will stop displaying on your Carousel Cloud players.
“Live” Google Slides Bottom Banner: We do not have the ability to remove the white bottom banner on 'Live' Google Slides bulletins.