Transfer ownership of OneDrive Business
Any steps to transfer the ownership of files and folder from OneDrive account to another?
Your competitor can do it, but OneDrive... NO

19 comments
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Anonymous commented
Hi,
It would be greatly appreciated if Microsoft looked into transfer of files and permissions when employees leave a company. I've just had to move over 20 folders and X amount of files and manually run through all permissions of the folders that had been shared out of a users personal OneDrive area.
If a employee leaves, OneDrive should be able to move all the users files to another user and keep permissions in tact. This is the case for Dropbox as an example.
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Brian Higgins commented
I would ultimately like to be able to automate this using the Graph API's as part of the off board process. using the Graph, can we change ownership of the off boarded user's OneDrive content, so it simply appears in the target user (usually the manager of the off boarded user) for them to disposition the content, or re-share? changing ownership should also not change existing shared access or impact on-going business access to the content.
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Chris commented
Nice that there's a feature to be able to give myself access to a user's OneDrive. But I would like to assign access to another user (not myself). I suppose I could go to SharePoint Admin Center > User Profiles > User > drop down > site collection admins (although this seemed to not work consistently) or directly edit the site collection admins from the user's OneDrive page, but this is a lot of extra steps. Would love to be able to do it right from the 365 admin page.
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Tilo commented
today I used Admin to open OD of leaving employee
OneDrive Settings
OneDrive details >> Access
View and edit folders and files
You will be granted permissions to manage this user's OneDriveIn OD I could move to: and move to my OD.
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Partners commented
When can we expect this implemented?
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David commented
As an admin, we should be able to change ownership of folders between our users' OneDrive accounts. Is this feature available yet?
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Brandon commented
Also, worth mentioning, when you go to delete a user in O365, it should prompt you to change the ownership. Otherwise, if the OneDrive already has a alternate assignee it will delegate to them. This process emails that user or new assignee/owner of the drive an email.
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Brandon commented
Don't know if this will help, but I posted the steps I have found useful below.
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Brandon commented
Text Only:
STEP 1:
After you have signed in, to the admin portal
(1.) you will locate the "Users" section
(2.) then go to "Active users"
(3.) Then search for the user your looking to move/save/or
change ownership of the OneDrive data from.
(4.) Select the check box to the left of the users "Display name"
(5.) Block the termination user. At the top of the new kick out window, click on the button (under the users name) labeled "Block sign-in"
(6.) Then you can scroll down through the user's option till you get to the "OneDrive Settings"Skip "Access - copying files" for now, we want to kick them from all connections to the OneDrive.
STEP 2:(1.) Change setting: External Sharing
- Turn this off
(2.) Sign-out (make sure the user's AD account and access has been disabled?)
- Click "Initiate"STEP 3:
(1.) Select all or some of the documents that are needed
(2.) Then click "Download"
(3.) It will download a .zip file to which can be moved or store somewhere if needed. -
Phil commented
This must now be a major requirement under GDPR!!!!!!
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Olivier commented
It was announced last month at SPC18, currently being rolled out for targeted users:
https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=#abc&featureid=16635 -
David commented
Oh hello. It's been years already and still OneDrive is the most feature limited cloud software? I am Jack's utter lack of surprise.
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Anonymous commented
I think this is the best way to setup onedrive business for whole team. Wherever the folders is prepared by administrator and then the owner can be changed after.
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Nicholas Balestrino commented
We run into this issue frequently with rehires - where when a contractor leaves and then joins again, their previous OneDrive which needs to be rejoined to their "new" account. Currently we can only do this by opening a support request each time with MS.
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Karl commented
This must get added on. Admins need a way to centrally control move documents between their users and sharepoint without having to log into that user's account or have the user jump through hoops to get it done.. Relying on the user interface is both problematic and tedious.
See also Email
Even if the feature was a single dumping ground for all removed users documents goes to by default that is only a hidden folder designated by the admin somewhere in SharePoint.
This seems to be a simple thing and all of your competitors can do something similar to this function. Why wasn't this added in immediately?
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Samy commented
Definitely agreed with everyonel here, I've been searching for a few hours now and still don't see this feature available, how is it that Google makes this so simple with Google Drive + Google Admin and OneDrive is still catching up? I would appreciate if Microsoft stepped up and organized and simplified Office365 Admin Features. You would think that Microsoft would invest more money into improving the development of all these Administrative tasks when using Cloud Software, specially when they are trying to move everyone to the cloud. With all the subscription revenue being received this should be a great priority.
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Kristen Mansell commented
This is a critical piece missing from Office 365. Having to export or copy files to then import into the new user is beyond ridiculous. The fact that we can transfer ownership of files when we delete a user from G Suite, but cannot in Office 365 is pretty sad if you think about it.
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Matt Mendenhall commented
I agree with Alex and anonymous poster below. This feature should be a prioritized requirement for OneDrive. The current process is beyond clunky and still requires a copying process from the old account to the manager's account. When an account has terminated, it should be as simple as a one click from an automated email, and the files should end up in a separate folder in the manager's OneDrive with an option to reassign to another user if needed.
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Anonymous commented
Much needed feature. a new admin.ondrive.com site was release today. The transfer ownership needs to be here.