When you connect a Glide app to an Excel workbook, three pieces of identity get locked together: the file’s location, the Microsoft account that authenticated, and the Glide account that owns the connection. Understanding which of these you can change later — and which you can’t — is the difference between a smooth setup and a costly rebuild.
What you can safely change
The Microsoft (Office 365) account. You can swap which Microsoft account authenticates the connection at any time. This is the right way to handle staff turnover — if the person who originally connected the app leaves the company, you can reconnect using another Microsoft account without rebuilding anything.
What you cannot change
The file’s storage location. Moving the workbook between drives — for example, from personal OneDrive to SharePoint, or between two SharePoint sites — assigns the file a new ID in Microsoft. Glide cannot follow it. Re-adding the moved file creates new tables, breaking every component, computed column, action, automation, and row owner setting that referenced the originals.
The Glide account that owns the connection. The Glide user who originally added the data source is permanently tied to it. If that Glide account is deleted, the connection cannot be transferred to another Glide user — even if the Microsoft authentication is updated. Always preserve the Glide account that set up the connection.
Recommended setup
Three rules cover almost every long-term reliability problem:
Store the workbook in SharePoint, not personal OneDrive. SharePoint files belong to your organization and survive personnel changes. Personal OneDrive files are deleted with the user’s account (after a short retention window), and copies made afterward have new file IDs that Glide can’t recognize.
Connect using a Microsoft account that won’t be removed. Use a dedicated service account (for example,
glide-integrations@yourcompany.com) owned by IT, not any individual employee. If that’s not possible, use an account belonging to a stable, central role and exempt it from offboarding processes.Preserve the Glide account that owns the connection. The simplest way to make this durable is to create the Glide account using the same shared email address as the Microsoft service account in rule #2 (for example,
glide-integrations@yourcompany.com) — that way both connections are owned by an identity your IT team controls, not any individual employee. If the connection was originally set up under a personal Glide account and that person leaves the company, do not delete or deactivate the account; instead, transfer its email or admin rights to someone who remains, and keep the account itself active on your team.
Quick reference
Action | Safe? |
Change the Microsoft account that authenticates the connection | ✅ |
Rename or move the workbook within the same drive | ✅ |
Refresh expired Microsoft tokens | ✅ |
Move the workbook between OneDrive and SharePoint or another OneDrive | ❌ |
Move the workbook between different SharePoint sites | ❌ |
Close the Microsoft account that authenticated the connection | ❌ |
Delete the Glide account that owns the connection | ❌ |
Delete and recreate the workbook (even with the same name) | ❌ |
If something has already gone wrong
If you’ve already moved a file across drives or lost the original Glide account, the practical paths are: revert the change (if the original file/account is still recoverable), rebuild the affected parts of your app on a properly configured setup.
Summary
Keep the file in SharePoint, the Microsoft account durable, and the Glide account preserved. With those three in place, you can change Microsoft authentications freely as your team evolves, and your Glide app will keep working without modification.