topic Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders in Peer-Peer Topics

allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

panderson — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 15:48:50 GMT

when I try to follow these instructions, there is no transfer ownership option. Do I have to enable something in the Admin console?

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2494892?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

Change owners in Google Drive

Important: You can transfer ownership of a file to someone you previously shared the file with. Learn more about sharing files from Google Drive.

On your computer, open Google Drive.
Find the file you want to transfer then right-click.
Click Share > click Share

.
Next to the recipients name, click the Down arrow

Transfer ownership.

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

panderson — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 19:31:01 GMT

Would it be better to create a shared drive (with both new and old owner) and have the owner of the folders/files that they want to transfer to the other person move them to the shared drive and then have the new owner move them to their drive? I guess we could just have them use the shared drive, but the drive/folders will really only be used by the one new person.

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

Bill_Gibson — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 19:55:19 GMT

An important part of this process is that file file must have already been shared (edit access?) with the other account.

Then you repeat the process and "Transfer ownership" should then be an additional option

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

Bill_Gibson — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 19:57:17 GMT

Shared Drive is THE way to go if there is a collection of files organized into sub folders, or if the files are owned by various accounts. Then with adequate Admin permissions the collection of files can easily be moved into a Shared Drive.

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

panderson — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 20:35:43 GMT

If there are files in the folders being moved over to the shared drive that the user doesn't own, do they get moved (or copied) into the shared drive? And if the new user is a content manager could they move everything (the folders and files) to their drive?

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

ekramer — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 20:51:12 GMT

I just helped a teacher with this process: they had files in My Drive that were shared with them in the past by a colleague who has since left the department (and has an active Google account). They created the shared drive, added this colleague as a Contributer to the drive and then moved all the files owned by themself and the colleague to the shared drive. After the move is complete (note that the move takes place silently in the background; no UI) then they can remove the colleague as a contributor to the shared drive.

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

Bill_Gibson — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:06:01 GMT

To move files that you do not own into a Shared Drive, OR to move entire folders into a Shared Drive you need to either be a Super Admin, or have been grated the Admin Privilege "Services > Drive and Docs > Settings > Move any file or folder into shared drives".

As you mention, you can upload then download files/folders to/from a Shared Drive, but you must have the Manger role, not just Content Manager.

Side Note: Unselecting the two Shared Drive Settings - Access controls
"Allow people outside of XYZ to access files" and
"Allow people who aren't shared drive members to access files"
are a way to strip off others with whom files/folders have been shared as they are moved into a Shared Drive.

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

panderson — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:59:43 GMT

Do you know if it will or can make a copy of the file not owned by the user? Or should the User make a copy of it before trying to move everything?

My thought is user would put all the files and folders they wanted transferred to the new user into a folder on their drive and moving the whole folder to the shared drive. Of course I wouldn't want to move someone else's files to the shared folder that they may end up losing access to.

Would it make more sense for the user to share the folder with an admin who can move the folder to the shared drive?

It would be really nice to be able to transfer ownership of a folder and everything in it that is owned by the user doing the transfer to the user. And cut out the middleperson (admin). Having to transfer every file individually could be a real chore, as could be having to have admins involved in all the transferring. Would also be nice (providing the user has the permissions) if the user doesn't own one or more of the files that it would just move a copy of the files to the new user, rather than the user having to make each one of them before hand.

That is what I am trying to set up, if there is an easier way, I am all ears. I just don't think an admin should need to be involved in the whole process between two consenting staff members ;).

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

Bill_Gibson — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:21:00 GMT

I agree, not transferring ownership of the content of of folder when applying an ownership change to the folder is frustrating. Consider contributing to this Idea feature request.

If a user with elevated privileges tries to move files into the Shared Drive it will move them regardless of the owners.

If a user with standard privileges tries to move content into a Shared Drive that they are not the owner of, then the process will fail with a useful error message.

A standard user could make a copy of anything, then move the copy that they own into the Shared Drive, but this creates duplicate-soup of files....of which I would advise against.

We've created a custom Admin role with the added permissions and given this to our senior EdTech folks, we lovingly refer to these as "super powers".

We're still on our journey to Shared Drives, but it's been a great place where existing employees who wish to pass on resources before they leave can place everything into a single folder, then our folks with super powers bulk move the contents into a Shared Drive that is shared with their peers. Hopefully as our catalog of Shared Drives is built out, more and more content will organically be created/moved into these locations for regular use...long before it's simply a succession management tool.

Re: allow user to transfer ownership of files and folders

Kim_Nilsson — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 05:40:04 GMT

Using GAM7 you can somewhat work around the issue of non-movable files, by letting it create shortcuts to files that can't be moved.

https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki/Users-Drive-Copy-Move#complex-moves