How to Transfer Ownership of Drive files to a new owner?

Transfer Ownership

Transfer Drive files to a new owner as an admin

As an administrator, you can change the owner of a file stored in Google Drive if the current owner and the proposed owner are in your organization. For example, if someone leaves your company, you can transfer the files they own to someone else. That way, you can save their files before deleting their account. Transferring files does not affect who has access to the files.

Who you can transfer files to and from

Transfer to users who are:

• In your organization

• Have an active account, not suspended, archived, or deleted.

• Have adequate storage space (learn how to check their storage on the storage page)

Transfer from users who are:

• In your organization

• Not on litigation hold (learn how to review holds in Vault)

• Not already been deleted. If needed, you can restore a recently deleted user.

Transfer all of a user's files to a new owner

The following instructions describe how to transfer ownership when the current owner's account remains active. If you plan to delete the current owner's account, you can transfer ownership of their files when you delete the user.

Step 1: Prepare accounts and files for transfer

• Suspend the current owner's account. This action prevents them from creating or moving content during the transfer. For details, go to Suspend a user temporarily.

• Make sure the file hierarchy structure of the previous owner is the same for the new owner. If there are other owners in the hierarchy, you must transfer those files separately. For details, on this page see How bulk transfers work.

• Tell the new owner not to add files to Drive during the transfer.

• If you want to transfer files that are in Trash, move the files out of Trash. Items in the Trash are not transferred. If you delete the user, untransferred files in Trash are deleted, too.

• If you need to transfer orphaned files (files that have lost their parent folders):

• Open Drive and in the search box, enter is:unorganized owner:user_email_address.

• Move any files that you want to transfer to the user’s My Drive.

 Step 2: Transfer ownership

• In the Admin console, go to Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs.

• Click Transfer ownership.

  
  
  

• For From user, enter the current owner's email address and select the user from the results.

• For To user, enter the new owner's email address and select the user from the results.

  

• Click Transfer Files.

• Wait for the transfer to complete. The new owner, the previous owner, and the admin who started the transfer get a confirmation email.

• (Optional) If you suspended the current owner’s account, restore the suspended user’s account.

How bulk transfers work

A transfer folder is created

If files change ownership, a transfer folder is created in the new owner’s My Drive with the following contents:

• Transferred folders and files that were in the previous owner’s My Drive.

• Transferred Computers folders if the previous owner used a Drive sync client (for example, Drive for Desktop).

• Shortcuts to the previous owner’s files whose parent folders are not shared with the new owner.

If a file was in someone else’s My Drive but owned by the previous owner, and that file was in a folder that's shared with the new owner, ownership transfers, but the file remains in the existing folder. The file isn't in the transfer folder and no shortcut is created. Sometimes, a separate empty transfer folder is also created.

If no files change ownership, no transfer folder is created.

Previous owner permissions and history

• The previous owner can still edit any transferred files unless you delete their account or change their permissions.

• Even if the previous owner's account no longer exists, you can find a file's ownership history in the file's version history or, for recent ownership changes, the Drive log events.

Known limitations and alternatives

• You can’t transfer ownership of Google Maps files.

• You can't transfer ownership to or from an external user, such as a personal Google Account or a user in another organization. This limitation is to protect user and company data from unauthorized transfer and access. Depending on your organization’s sharing policies, you may be able to use the following alternatives.