You can only transfer files between Google accounts if both of you have permitted a transfer. If not, there will be no option to transfer the file at all. The number of times you may transfer Google Drive from one person to another depends upon whether both accounts are personal accounts, or if one is a workplace/school account. A folder does not automatically include any files within it. So if someone else owns the folder, you will still be the owner of the contents inside of that folder even though someone else owns the folder itself. Google’s instructions say you still own the files inside once someone else owns the folder.
The way to make both people happy is through copying. One price to know before deciding on a copy is that any files placed in a shared folder, regardless of where that shared folder is located (shared folder A, shared folder B), count towards the account that owns those files, and not for the account that is sharing those files. So as soon as you create a copy, it will then use your own storage space from that point forward. You also will receive a different URL link, and no longer appear on the URL link until someone else has placed you there again. The accounts make the choice for the route to take, and the files only provide the work involved.
Which Google Drive Transfer Method Fits Your Accounts?
Prior to counting files, determine the relationship between the two accounts. Drive offers three different relationships, or types, that limit access to different routes: both accounts as personal accounts, both accounts as business accounts (inside an organization), or one account as a personal account and one as a business account (a hybrid account). The hybrid account is associated with only one of the routes, which is terminated at that point. Google does not permit either an ownership transfer to or from a hybrid account and therefore, no setting a system administrator can configure will facilitate the ownership transfer, since this feature’s restriction exists at the feature level, not in the sharing policy.
Before selecting a method of file transfer, sort yourself into one of the three categories listed above. Once you understand your category, only the routes that remain in that category will be worth evaluating against each other.
- Two personal accounts: ownership transfer, a copy, or an export.
- Two accounts inside one organization: all three, plus an administrator-run bulk transfer if you’re leaving or changing roles.
- One personal and one work or school account: a copy or an export, unless an administrator arranges a shared-drive handoff on the organization’s side.
| Route | What the destination gets | What the source keeps | Can you undo it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership transfer | The original file, its link and its access list | Editor access by default | No, once the recipient accepts |
| Copy made by the destination account | A new file, new link, no collaborators | Everything, untouched | Yes |
| Export and upload | Files you download and re-upload | Everything, untouched | Yes |
| Administrator bulk transfer | The files plus a transfer folder listing them | Editor access until permissions change | Not by the original owner |
Read all items listed in the second row as the default under uncertainty and read the first row as the maximum cost. In other words, if you were to copy the file to your Google account, both accounts would retain something usable, and the copied file would survive a reversal of the decision to transfer. Conversely, ownership transfers do not provide this benefit; the original owners will continue to have access to the file, you will be reduced to the role of Editor, and once the file recipient has accepted ownership, they have the option of removing you entirely from the file. Therefore, the asymmetry of power and control, rather than the quantity of clicks required, is the deciding factor between these two options.
Check Who Owns the Files Before Moving a Folder
When you transfer ownership of a Google Drive folder, you are transferring just the folder itself and not the ownership of the documents stored within it. The recipient now has top-level access to the folder and can treat the transfer as complete. However, all of the documents are still under your ownership. Therefore, when you eventually close your Google Drive account, all of the documents will continue to be associated with your account. Google has a separate rule regarding the ownership of folders from the ownership of the documents contained within those folders.
The ownership of a folder does not necessarily dictate who can reorganize or rename the folder. The folder is simply a container for each individual document. Stanford’s IT guidance makes the same point from the other direction, telling staff that ownership has to be handled file by file because a folder transfer won’t reach the files within it. Be sure to read the ownership graph before moving any folder from a Google Drive account to another Google Drive account.
To read the ownership graph, log into Google Drive through a web browser, select the folder of interest, go to “Share,” and view the access list. You will see the account that has the ability to delete the documents entirely at the top of that list, and those accounts below it hold permission to access those documents; they do not hold the right to delete them entirely. You will want to repeat this process for individual documents located inside the folder, making sure to check for documents that a coworker created and placed there. You will frequently discover that the folder and its contents have different owners.
| What you see | What it means | What the move changes |
|---|---|---|
| You are the Owner | The file is yours and counts against your storage | A transfer can move it; a copy can duplicate it |
| You are an Editor | Someone else owns it, and can delete or restrict it | Nothing — you can’t transfer what you don’t own |
| It sits in Shared with me | It was shared to you and belongs to the sharer | Nothing until you make your own copy |
| It sits in a shared drive | The organization or team owns it, not a person | Access follows membership, not a transfer |
The initial data collected from an approved reading determines how you prepare your audit sheet. The information in the right-hand column has been established by the prior three columns, and an incorrect entry in any of the three preceding columns will cause your migration to appear successful for up to one week and ultimately fail.
| Audit sheet row | Who owns it now | Who needs access afterwards | Route that fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| The folder itself | |||
| The files inside it | |||
| Anything shared with you |
Copy Selected Files Without Giving Up the Source
As a copy, both accounts stay intact since the copy becomes a brand new file as opposed to an assignment of an existing file. You own the files you created and therefore, when making a copy into your second account, that copy becomes an immediate part of that new account when it exists. Also, when making a copy, there is no change to the information in the original, its link, comments, or people who had access to it.
When copying files between Google Drive accounts, the copying occurs within your Google Drive account where the file resides. To copy a file, access the Google Drive where that file is located, right-click on the file, select the “Make a Copy” option, and choose where to store the new copy. If you open the original file, go to File > Make a Copy, that option works the same and provides the added benefit of allowing you to bring over comments and suggestions to the new file. There is no option to copy folders; therefore, the only way to create folder-sized copies would be to create a series of file-sized copies and then reconstruct the folder structure on the other side.
| What you keep | What you lose |
|---|---|
| A working copy in the destination account | The original link — the copy has a different URL |
| The source file exactly as it was | Every collaborator, who has to be re-shared |
| The choice of when to delete the original | Comments and version history, unless you copy them |
There are two unexpected issues relating to collaboration and storage that are important to point out. Collaboration on a copied file can only continue if both collaborators have access to the original file and because the copied file is a new file, it must be shared again with collaborators unless it was created using the File menu inside a Drive-native file. The second issue to note is regarding storage; when you create a new file from another person’s shared folder, the original file did not count against your Google Drive storage quota. However, your copy now belongs to you, and it will count against your quota each month going forward until you delete it.
Before paying for a bulk migration service, it’s critical to understand what those services actually provide. VaultMe has described their tool in many ways, but they maintain that it is essentially just a copying tool. They refer to their service now as an automated migration solution because it will allow you to quickly and easily create duplicates of your files without having to make any changes in the original location of your files; and so you will want to remove the originals after you have made the copies, and then transfer access to them to whoever ends up with the copies. That’s the real meaning of an automated migration — the creation of duplicated files as quickly as possible, rather than transferring ownership of the original files. Therefore, once you’ve used a bulk migration service to get your files migrated, you’ll still have the original account as part of your storage solution. The next logical question to ask is: can I delete my source account after making all of those copies to my new account?
Transfer Eligible File Ownership on Google Drive Web
The first step in the transfer process is determining the cost to you. This is the only thing you cannot undo. Once you send a transfer and the recipient accepts the transfer, you cannot cancel the transfer as per Google’s instructions, and you are automatically downgraded to Editor. The new owner may remove you at any time. If existing access (comments, version history, prior access) is still useful for your work, you will be able to access them through the copy method; otherwise, those items are transferred to someone who also has the ability to turn them off.
The only thing that has occurred prior to the acceptance of the transfer is that the pending owner receives an email informing them of being upgraded to Editor until they accept the transfer. Until they accept the transfer, you remain the owner and may cancel the transfer. The period between sending the transfer and the acceptance is commonly misinterpreted as “failure”. If the recipient never accepts, you will retain ownership of the file indefinitely. If the recipient declines the transfer, nothing will be changed.
Share the file with the individual initially. Ownership can only be transferred to someone who has previously been given access to the file; therefore, go to the Share area of the Google Drive file you wish to transfer and enter the individual’s email address, making certain they are placed in the area marked ‘Editor’.
To transfer ownership of the file, you first must go to your Google Drive account and log in. Once there and at your file’s Google Drive location, right click on the file, then click Share > Share.
You will then be able to transfer ownership of the file by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the recipient’s name and selecting Transfer ownership from the list, and confirming your action afterwards.
Step 4: Let the recipient accept. They open the sharing settings on that file, or search their own Drive for pendingowner:me, and accept. Until they do, the file is still yours and the request is still cancelable from your side.
An option that is not showing can be indicative of one of two situations – the recipient has not yet received the file or the recipient and sender have accounts that operate on completely different levels regarding where things reside in Google. In other words, an option will not be visible.
When you are performing the steps as described in the Google knowledge base regarding how to change a file owner, you will need to do so through a desktop computer. The instructions for Android are essentially identical to the instructions for iOS devices (iPhone & iPad) in that both state that you cannot change ownership of files through mobile devices, therefore you must go to drive.google.com from a desktop computer to do so. The menus and labels are updated as of September 2026 based on Google’s instructions; however, regardless of where they “reside”, the overall process of doing so remains the same.
Additionally, if you are trying to list above hundreds of thousands of files and only see one or two of the files, do not click on them. When transferring files within an organisation, the process can take a while to show up. There are specially created routes and processes within each organisation to facilitate file transfers so that you can accomplish your business goal in a timely manner.
Use Google Takeout or Workspace Admin Transfer for a Whole Drive
In two scenarios, you’re transferring all content (files) but in the first case you’re transferring files owned by you alone; in the second case you’re transferring files that belong to a company/organization you’re leaving. If you’re a recent graduate with a long history of stored documents and also have been an employee of a company that uses a Workspace domain, you’ll see that the visual layouts of the two situations may look similar, but the routing paths to retrieve your files will not.
For your own files, Google has released an export tool that does not require any type of eligibility verification — it simply will allow you to download the data from your Drive account. You open Google Takeout; select Drive; and select either a Download Link or to have the archive sent to you via Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box. Please note that when an archive is sent to a Drive account, it is counted against the quota in that Drive account so be sure that the target Drive account has enough space available.
There are two pieces of information from Google’s Takeout help documentation that you’ll want to factor in while planning for this type of transfer: 1) exporting a large quantity of files may take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days; and 2) if you make any changes to your files while Google is preparing the file for download, those changes may not be included in the archive you’ve requested. The most important detail that most users overlook is the fact that downloading your information does not delete it from the servers of Google. When you perform an “export” you are simply making a copy of that information that was contained in your account; therefore, if you need information that was created by another person, you cannot export that information; you must first create a copy.
If your account is part of a school or workplace, you also have a second, more automatic option. You can copy the Drive files that belong to you to your own personal account using Google’s Takeout Transfer tool. Unlike the imports from a personal account to a school or workplace account, the Michigan IT’s walkthrough provides clear, detailed instructions for the items that are included in your Takeout Transfer — there are many things that are sent to your account while other files may not be included with the Takeout Transfer; that is, the files you downloaded were those that you owned previously, while files that have been created by others were not included and your sharing settings will not apply as those files no longer belong to you.
You will receive copies of any comments made on your files; however, you will not have access to your version history of those files. In addition, your school needs to enable Takeout Transfer. If you are not able to load the page for Takeout Transfer, you will need to contact your school’s IT department for support, as you cannot enable Takeout Transfer on your own.
The transfer of files between organizational accounts is performed by someone else. An administrator can use the Google Admin console to either transfer a single file or transfer everything from one user to another in the same organization. The current administration guide for transfers is detailed regarding conditions and restrictions: transfers to or from users outside of your organization are not supported; the recipient must have an active user account and sufficient storage space; the user whose files have been transferred must still maintain an active account; files in Trash will not be transferred; and any transfers that take longer than 36 hours will be considered unsuccessful and must be restarted.
When files need to exit the organisation in their entirety, the guide suggested to Administrators that a Shared Drive be a bridge between the outside owner moving their files to the Organisation’s controlled drive, which is the point at which Ownership of the files transfers to the Organisation. The content located on that drive is property of the Team, not one individual, and therefore any non-members may lose access to the content located there; and the Permissions associated with the Original Parent folders are not passed onto the content on the new Shared Drive.
Practitioners have considered this route to be a workaround as opposed to a solution. An Information Security Analyst from an Admin Group for a Workspace, involved in transferring folders containing terabytes of data, stated that “there is no native way of doing this in Google” and that using a Shared Drive instead is a manual process, with its own associated issues.
Verify Ownership, Permissions, and the Source Before Deleting Anything
The cleanup phase is when a migration process turns from an operational state to a loss so it is important to ensure that all aspects are completed correctly before deleting anything. After performing the verification steps, both source and destination accounts should be open so that file-to-file comparisons can occur versus comparing folder names, as the folder view may look accurate but the contents may still belong to the source account.
- Confirm the owner in the destination. Open a file you moved and check that the destination account is listed as Owner, not merely an editor.
- Look for the transfer folder. A bulk transfer arrives inside a transfer folder in the new owner’s My Drive, so find that folder before deciding anything is missing.
- Re-check access. Everyone who still needs the file should be on the sharing list. A copy would have arrived with nobody on it.
- Deal with shared items. Anything you could only view belongs to its owner, and it never became part of your move.
- Confirm the storage moved. When a transfer completes, the file leaves the old account’s My Drive, stops counting against it, and starts counting against the new owner.
To determine who owned a file prior to migration, an individual can check the file version history for ownership tracking and any recent changes to the file will show in the Drive log events. The only thing that cannot be recovered is an accepted transfer. Once a file has been transferred, it is no longer owned by an individual and is under the control of the new owner and therefore, an individual may be completely removed from the file and will not know whether the migration process was successful or not.
Deletion of files or folders should take place after the verification has been completed. Google’s administrator guide states that you should never delete anything until after the move has completed, as deleting items during migration can produce data loss and/or an incomplete transfer. Therefore, before deleting anything out of the source account, check to see if the files you want to keep in the destination are open, have access for those who require it, and ensure that any files that existed solely in the source have been transferred over. Deleting files from the source account rather than transferring will lead to the same consequences — since any files still on the source account will be leaving with the source account.
Keep a Reversible Copy Before You Change Ownership
The only aspect of your plan that you can reverse or modify is the copy; when an ownership transfer occurs after acceptance by the other individual, the ownership transfer cannot be retracted. Therefore, anytime you have concerns regarding what you’re transferring to another individual, create a duplicate copy or file export first and confirm that you have access to the necessary files before transferring your files to the new owner. Creating duplicates prior to transferring file ownership creates additional minor costs (duplicated storage) due to the need to reshare the same files twice; however, failing to create a duplicate of the file prior to transferring ownership results in losing rights or access to that file. Reversing the sequence will change the results.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I transfer a File from my Personal Google Drive to a Work or School Account? No. Google does not support transferring files in either direction, nor will the ability to do so appear if the recipient isn’t eligible to receive it. You can either copy or export the file.
What if I transfer ownership to someone and they never accept it? If they do not accept the request to transfer ownership, nothing will happen. You will remain the legal owner of the file, it will remain in your Drive account, and you can cancel the transfer request at any time prior to their accepting it.
Can I transfer a file’s ownership from my Phone? No. The instructions for changing ownership from both Android and Apple devices state that ownership cannot be transferred through a mobile device, and they both instruct users to use a computer to visit drive.google.com. You can still open, edit, and share files via the mobile app, but you cannot transfer file ownership using mobile devices.
If I delete the old folder where the file was located after I transferred its ownership, does the file still exist for the new owner? You should only delete files that you still own. If the transfer of ownership is complete, you can no longer delete the file because you are not the legal owner. Deleting your copy of a file created by someone else does not remove the owner’s copy.
Is a Google Takeout export the same thing as Moving Everything? No. it is a copy, and according to Google, downloading a file does not remove it from their servers. Therefore, even after downloading the file using Google Takeout, the source account will still retain the files until the source account deletes them.
