Google Drive - Transferring Ownership of Documents
Today I asked about transferring ownership of documents in G Drive. There are five ways I know of to change ownership of files. It occurred to me I should share here in case others are asked (or wonder) about this also!
I've outlined them below, because some will depend on G Suite administrators being involved, and some depend on the number of files to be moved.
Here the ways:
- Copying the file - done by you (or currently user) by going to the File menu on a file you have edit rights to, and creating a copy (what you are currently doing) This by far the most tedious if it involves more than a couple files. It actually makes multiple copies of the file, each with its own ownership. The best use of this method is for when a document is wanted by another person, but the creator also still needs the file.
- Switching ownership - the current owner of the file goes into the share settings and changes the access right of another editor to owner (see Google Help Discussion here). Again this is tedious as it has be to done on on each file and folder if there are many. It does avoid all the extraneous copies, and nothing has to be deleted. The best use of this is when a document needs to be managed by a different person.
- Transferring Ownership of all files - a Google Admin can transfer files from one account to another in the Google Admin Panel. The best use of this is when ALL files need to be moved (i.e. when someone leaves the district) to another person.
- Using Google Takeout - the current owner can bundle all the files into one folder, and use this service to export them to another account. (I have a blog post showing how to do this.) The best use of this is when there are many files that need to be transferred, and there is not frequent need to move these files (such as from frequent turn-over).
- Creating a Team Drive - a Google Admin has to enable Team Drive as an option, then a drive can be created in which the "team" has ownership instead of individuals. People that are added have instant access to files, people that are removed no longer have access. (Because it is on or off for an entire organization, some districts do not have this on as it can create confusion.)