Google Sheet trigger failing with DNS error

Questions
1

Describe the problem/error/question

I’ve seen other reports of this but I believe these are for the self hosted options. We are using n8n Pro version.

Anyways I’m seeing lots of failures (few successes actually) from my workflow that has a Google Sheets trigger. The error is this mysterious “The DNS server returned an error, perhaps the server is offline” error

What is the error message (if any)?

The DNS server returned an error, perhaps the server is offline

Please share your workflow

Share the output returned by the last node

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version:
    1.123.18 (Cloud)
  • Database (default: SQLite):
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app):
    • n8n cloud
  • Operating system:
2

Is automation running? Or do you always get this error? If it is running, try switching settings - on error - Continue!
Right now you have Stop Workflow
The next time the automation runs, it will also process the previous lines!

Also please check your n8n credentials

3

Hi @Michael_Lueck

Since you’re on n8n Cloud (Pro), this isn’t a problem with your workflow or credentials. That “The DNS server returned an error” message usually means there’s a temporary DNS issue between n8n Cloud and Google’s API ( it’s been reported by other users with different nodes too).

What you can try:

Turn on Retry on failure for the Google Sheets Trigger, and if you have other Google Sheets nodes downstream, enable it there too. You might also want to bump up the polling interval a bit to give it more breathing room.

Since you’re on Cloud, you can’t tweak DNS settings yourself.

If it keeps happening:

Reach out to n8n Cloud support with the exact error message, mention it’s the Google Sheets Trigger, that it’s intermittent, and send them a few failed execution IDs. They’ll need to look at it from the infrastructure side.

PS: Recreating the workflow or credentials won’t help here.