How can I transfer Google Drive's files/folders ownership

Question

Is there a way to transfer ownership of a folder or file to another Google account? What sorts of pros and cons are involved here?

Answer 1

Go to Drive or a Docs, Sheets, or Slides home screen.

Open the sharing box:

In Drive: Select the file or folder and click the share icon at the top.

In a Docs, Sheets, or Slides home screen: Open the file and click Share in the top-right corner of the file.

If the new owner already has edit access, skip to Step 4.

Otherwise, follow these steps:

Type the email address of the new owner in the "Invite people" field.

Click Share & save.

(Step 4): Click Advanced in the bottom-right corner of the sharing box.

Click the drop-down menu next to the name of the person you want to own the file or folder.

Select Is owner.

Click Done.

You'll have access to the file as an editor after you transfer ownership.

Google Apps Customers: You can't make someone outside of your domain the owner of your Google Doc.

Only Google Apps customers in Government and Education domains can transfer ownership of a synced or uploaded file (like a PDF or image file).

Consumer Drive users: You can't transfer ownership of a synced or uploaded file (like a PDF or an image file).

Source: support.google.com

Answer 2

The only way currently to transfer all subfolders and files inside a folder to another user (except sharing between users of the same Google Apps domain(s) where there is an admin feature for that) is this:

1. Share the folder with the other account
2. Add the folder to the other account's drive
3. Run the following Google Apps Script on that folder:

`

function copyfoldersrecursively() {
  var name = "backup";
  var rootfolders = DriveApp.getFoldersByName(name);
  var newrootfolder = DriveApp.getRootFolder().createFolder(name+" NEW");

  while (rootfolders.hasNext()) {
    var rootfolder = rootfolders.next(); 
    recursiveFolderCopy(rootfolder, newrootfolder);
  }


  function recursiveFolderCopy(folder, newfolder) {
    copyFilesinFolder(folder, newfolder);
    var subfolders = folder.getFolders();
    while (subfolders.hasNext()) {
      var subfolder = subfolders.next();
      var newsubfolder = newfolder.createFolder(subfolder.getName());
      recursiveFolderCopy(subfolder, newsubfolder);
    }
  }


  function copyFilesinFolder(folder, newfolder) {
    var files = folder.getFiles();
    while (files.hasNext()) {
      try {
        var file = files.next();
        var filename = file.getName(); 
        file.makeCopy(filename, newfolder);
      } catch(e) {
        Logger.log(e);
      }
    }
  }
}

Note: The Google Apps Script API fails for some special file types such as Maps.

Answer 3

Currently google drive don't have a function/api to change owner to files and transfere the quota from a user to another. So i created a colab script that transfere reccursively the ownership of files whose ownership can be transferred and than dowload from an user and reupload from the other user all the other files.