Google Sheets , ownership transfer

[muratgonden]

Hello, we created lots of google sheet pages on our personal Gmail accounts. We decided to buy Google Workspace product. We want to transfer our personal Google sheets ownership to our workspace accounts. When we try to do that, we get an error message like this.

“Sorry, cannot transfer ownership to ourname@ourdomain.com Ownership can only be transferred to another user in the same organization as the current owner.”

The only reason we buy your workspace product instead of using free of charge is file ownership control.

I can understand that you cannot give file ownership to private Gmail account from workspace account. But if a user wants to transfer his file's ownership right from his private Gmail account to workspace. That should be granted. Otherwise, you are limiting your customers. Think about the users with previously created google sheets files. They are willing to pay extra by switching to Google Workspace product, but you are not allowing them to transfer ownership of their own files. I think there is a mistake over here. Could someone help us to resolve our case.

[icrew]

The easiest way to solve this is to create a Shared Drive with your Workspace account, and share it with your Gmail account, then move the Sheets into the Shared Drive. The ownership will transfer to being owned by the Shared Drive. 

Hope that helps,

Ian

[muratgonden]

Hello Ian , 

I created shared drive on my Workspace account , and shared with my gmail account. I switched to my gmail profile and moved the file into my shared folder. It doesn't transfer the ownership of the file. Ownership still belongs to my gmail account . I get same error message when i want to move the ownership via sharing.

[icrew]

two thoughts:

1) Are you using a Shared Drive (https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9310156?hl=en&ref_topic=9300128) not just a shared folder?

2) When you move a file into a shared drive, you will get asked if you want to change ownership to the shared drive. You will need to agree. 

If you’re still getting errors, a screenshot would help.

Ian

[efeblesp]

This works great for files. But what about folders? 

When I try it says “folders can't be moved into shared drives yet”. 
Several posts recommend granting admin access but this can’t be done for gmail accounts outside the Workspace, right?

[icrew · Accepted solution]

Correct. What you’ll need to do is recreate the folders, then move the files into those new folders in the shared drive. 
And yes, that’s a pain!

Ian

[johnjm]

The biggest pain since we started our project!

This makes the migration to Google Workspace practically IMPOSSIBLE! 

[johnjm]

@muratgonden @icrew @efeblesp 

We need to make Google understand that we need this change:
https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/Allowing-transfer-of-file-folder-ownership-bet...

[Yousef1]

I found a way to solve the folder issue. You need to add your google drive to file explorer. All I did was copy the entire directory, go to the shared drive within file explore and pasted the entire directory. That seemed to have worked.