How to Transfer Google Drive Ownership When an Employee Leaves

Imagine a sales manager opening a shared proposal folder three weeks after a colleague left, and finding every file gone. To prevent that, transfer the leaver’s Drive files to a new owner in the Admin console (Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Transfer ownership), or move them into a shared drive, before you delete the account. Patronum’s offboarding policy can transfer a leaver’s Drive files to their manager or straight into a shared drive, rebuilding the folder structure, and can exclude folders or only move files that were shared.

The order that keeps files safe

1. Check for a litigation hold. “You can’t transfer data or delete a user who is on litigation hold” (Google Workspace Admin Help). Talk to legal first.
2. Transfer the Drive files to a person or a shared drive (below).
3. Verify the transfer with the checklist at the end of this guide.
4. Then decide: suspend, archive or delete. Suspending buys time but isn’t free: “Suspended accounts are still charged at the same rate as active accounts” (Google Workspace Admin Help). Our guide to suspending, archiving or deleting a Google Workspace user compares all three.

Files the leaver owns vs files shared with them

A transfer only moves files the leaver owns. A leaver’s Drive usually holds three kinds of file:

• Files they own in My Drive. These are what Transfer ownership moves. Delete the user without moving them and they’re kept for 20 days, “only accessible if you restore the user” (Google Workspace Admin Help).
• Files other people shared with them. These belong to someone else and stay with that owner. The leaver simply loses access. Nothing to transfer.
• Files in shared drives. These already belong to the organization, so Google’s transfer “doesn’t include files in shared drives” (same page).

The awkward case is a file the team needs that an external account owns. You can’t take ownership of it, so the external owner has to share it with the new owner.

Option 1: Transfer ownership in the Admin console

This moves everything a user owns in My Drive to another user in your organization. You need the Drive & Docs administrator privilege. Google suggests suspending the leaver first so they can’t add or move files mid-transfer, and moving anything you want to keep out of their Trash, because “Items in Trash are not transferred” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

1. Sign in to the Google Admin console.
2. Go to Menu > Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs.
3. Click Transfer ownership.
4. Under From user, enter the leaver’s email and select them.
5. Under To user, enter the new owner’s email and select them.
6. Click Transfer Files.

The files land in a transfer folder in the new owner’s My Drive, and existing sharing doesn’t change. The new owner needs an active account with enough storage, Google Maps files can’t be transferred, and a transfer that runs past 36 hours stops and has to be restarted (same page).

Super admins can also transfer Drive files during deletion itself (Google Workspace Admin Help). It works, but it couples two decisions that are safer made separately.

Option 2: Transfer to a shared drive instead of a person

Handing everything to the leaver’s manager sets up the next problem: when the manager leaves, you’re back here. A shared drive is owned by the organization, so the files stop depending on anyone’s account. Natively, it’s manual: admins can move folders in if they “have view access for the folder and… are a manager of the shared drive” (Google Workspace Admin Help). Fine for one leaver, slow for ten a month.

In Patronum, you set this up once in an offboarding policy’s Files section (Patronum Help Center):

• Destination: a shared drive, or a person such as {{manager}}.
• What moves: all files, unshared only or shared only, with one folder excluded if needed. Looker Studio data can move too.
• External files: Patronum can ask external owners to grant the new owner access.

When the target is a shared drive, Patronum recreates the folder structure and keeps file IDs. The policy runs on an hourly cycle by default for users who match its scope and conditions, such as being moved into an offboarding organizational unit (Patronum Help Center). If someone leaves suddenly, Emergency Offboard lets you run a preconfigured policy against one user from the User Menu, without waiting for them to match its conditions (Patronum Help Center).

Single files, folders and bulk transfers

To hand one project folder to one person, Patronum’s Drive management lets admins browse a user’s files and change the owner of a selected item (Patronum Help Center). For bulk transfers across many users, script-minded admins often use GAM7, a free, open-source command-line tool that isn’t a Google product (GAM on GitHub).

Can you transfer ownership outside your organization?

No. “Google doesn’t support direct transfer of ownership to or from an external account” (Google Workspace Admin Help). If a leaver’s work needs to reach an outside partner, keep ownership in your domain, ideally in a shared drive, and share access instead.

Transfer Google Drive files from a deleted user

If the account is already deleted, you can still save its Drive files, but only inside the 20-day window. Google is direct about the order: “Before transferring data for a deleted user, you need to restore that user within 20 days of deletion” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

1. As a super admin, go to Directory > Users, click More options > Recently deleted users, point to the user and click Recover.
2. Pick an organizational unit and click Recover again. Google says this usually takes up to 24 hours, and in rare cases up to 5 days (Google Workspace Admin Help).
3. Once the account is back, run Transfer ownership as above.

Restore fails after 20 days, without a spare license for the user’s previous edition, or if your domain has moved (same page). And if you use Google Vault, retention rules and holds stop applying at deletion: that data “can be purged immediately” and “can’t be recovered even if you restore the user within 20 days” (Google Workspace Admin Help).

The mailbox is a separate job

Drive transfer doesn’t touch email. Patronum Archive covers that side: it moves a leaver’s email, in Mbox RFC 4155 format, and their Google Vault data into your organization’s own Google Cloud Storage bucket, “removing the need for Archive User licenses” (Patronum Archive). It doesn’t store Drive files, which is why the transfer above still matters.

Verify before you delete

Run through this before anyone clicks Delete:

• [ ] Google’s confirmation email reached the new owner, the leaver and you.
• [ ] The transfer folder is in the new owner’s My Drive, or the shared drive shows the expected folders.
• [ ] The new owner can open three or four files the team actually needs, including one from a shared folder.
• [ ] Nothing is stranded: the new owner searches Drive for is:unorganized owner:me to find transferred files that lost their parent folder (Google Workspace Admin Help).
• [ ] If Patronum ran the transfer, the policy’s execution log shows success for this user (Patronum Help Center).

Only then delete the account. Patronum’s Google Workspace offboarding page shows the full leaver policy, and our roundup of employee offboarding software for Google Workspace compares the options.

Sources

• Google Workspace Admin Help, delete or remove a user: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/users/delete-or-remove-a-user-from-your-organization
• Google Workspace Admin Help, restore a recently deleted user: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/users/restore-a-recently-deleted-user
• Google Workspace Admin Help, suspend a user: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/users/suspend-a-user-temporarily
• Google Workspace Admin Help, transfer Drive files to a new owner as an admin: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/drive/transfer-drive-files-to-a-new-owner-as-an-admin
• Google Workspace Admin Help, move your organization’s content to shared drives: https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/drive/move-your-organizations-content-to-shared-drives
• GAM on GitHub: https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM
• Patronum Help Center, creating an offboarding policy: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/creating-an-offboarding-policy-15zeh9t/
• Patronum Help Center, when will my policy run: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/when-will-my-policy-run-13y3b4c/
• Patronum Help Center, emergency offboarding: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/how-to-configure-emergency-offboarding-5zfjff/
• Patronum Help Center, managing users’ files: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/managing-users-files-woy216/
• Patronum Help Center, policy execution logs: https://help.patronum.io/en/article/viewing-policy-execution-logs-in-patronum-risefd/
• Patronum, Archive user data: https://www.patronum.io/archive-user-data