Hey @deano2025 

Using an external location for a public S3 bucket can be unnecessarily

External locations are designed to:

• Govern access to private cloud storage (S3, ADLS, GCS)

• Map Unity Catalog permissions to cloud-level security via storage credentials

• Work with managed tables, volumes, delta sharing, etc.

They rely on a Storage Credential, which is usually an IAM role or access key that grants access to a private bucket

But if you still want to create an External Location you can create a dummy Storage Credential using a placeholder ARN like:

arn:aws:iam::123141241214124:role/role_test

Then, use that credential when defining your External Location.

However, since the bucket is public, you’ll get the same result as simply reading it directly with spark.read...

Hope this helps to clarify, 🙂

Isi