How-to
How to transfer Google Drive ownership
Ownership of a Google Drive file is transferred either by the current owner in the sharing dialog or by an administrator in bulk from the Admin console user page. A bulk transfer moves the entire My Drive of one user to another and can take up to 24 hours to complete for large accounts.
| Single file | Owner opens Share, sets the recipient to Owner |
|---|---|
| Whole account | Admin console, user page, transfer files to another user |
| Propagation | Up to 24 hours for large My Drives |
| Not transferred | Files the user did not own, and shared drive content |
| Result | Transferred files land in a folder named after the old owner |
The click path in the Admin console
Open Directory, then Users, select the leaver, and choose the option to transfer their files to another user. Enter the recipient's address and confirm. The transfer runs asynchronously and the recipient receives the files in a folder named for the former owner.
Do the transfer before deleting the account. Deletion starts a limited recovery window, and once it closes the files are unrecoverable regardless of licence or Vault retention rules for Drive.
What a transfer will not do for you
It moves only files that person actually owned. Documents they merely edited stay with their owners, and shared drive content is unaffected because the organisation already owns it. That difference is the strongest argument for shared drives.
Existing sharing is preserved, so a transfer does not tidy access. If the leaver had shared material externally, that access survives the transfer and needs reviewing separately as part of offboarding.
- Transfer files before deleting or downgrading the account.
- Review external sharing on the transferred set afterwards.
- Expect a delay of up to 24 hours on large accounts before everything appears.
What we see that others don't say
A bulk Drive transfer preserves every existing share, including external ones, which is why offboarding that stops at the transfer step leaves former contractors and suppliers holding live access to the files.
What this doesn't cover
- Ownership cannot be transferred to an account outside the tenant.
- Shared drive content is not part of a user file transfer; drive membership is managed separately.
Questions we get asked
- How long does a Drive ownership transfer take?
- Small accounts complete within minutes. Large My Drives can take up to 24 hours, and files appear progressively in a folder named after the previous owner rather than all at once.
- Does transferring ownership change who can see the files?
- No. Existing sharing, including external sharing, is preserved through the transfer. Access review is a separate offboarding step and is the one most often skipped.
How this page is verified
Reviewed by Pearl Lemon Cloud migrations desk, Google Workspace migration engineers. Last checked .
- Click path checked in the current Google Admin console at the review date.
- Propagation window observed on transfers of My Drives above 200 GB for client tenants.
Sources you can check
Related pages
Leavers handled properly, every time?
Our managed service runs the transfer, the access review and the archive step as one dated process, so nothing is left open behind a departure.