Friday, October 17, 2014

Transfer Ownership of Google Document - Not Really!





Have you ever wondered how to transfer ownership of a document from your private Google account to a Google Apps for Education account?  Well, legally, you cannot do this. Google will not allow you to transfer ownership of a document from a private gmail account to a Google Apps for Education account.  
However, there is one way to work around with it.  Here's how:

In your private gmail account:
  • Share the folder with the GAFE account. The folder should contain the files you want to transfer ownership.
In your GAFE Account:
  • Go to your Google Drive
  • Click on 'Shared with Me'
  • Put a check mark in the checkbox for the folder you shared from your private gmail account
  • Click on 'Add to My Drive',
  • Now the folder will be listed under 'My Drive'
  • Click on 'My Drive'
  • Click on the folder
  • put a check mark in the checkbox for the files that are in the folder
  • Click on 'More', 'Make a Copy'
  • There will be two version of the file, one that is shared and one that is owned by the GAFE account
  • Create a new folder in the GAFE account
  • Move all the 'Copy of' files into the new folder
  • Rename the file(s) that is owned by the GAFE account, put a check in the checkbox, Click on 'More', 'Rename', assign a new name
  • Now all of the files you wanted to transfer ownership to are in your GAFE account and not shared with the private gmail account.
You can go back into your private gmail account and remove the sharing permission on the folder.  If desired, you can delete the entire folder.

Unfortunately, if you have many files and folders, this process can be very time consuming.  An alternate would be to just share the files and folders with your GAFE account and it will update the changes accordingly.