Ownership transfer from gmail.com to Google Workspace
Shared Drives are spaces where departments or working groups can manage files belonging to their team. However, for Personal Google account users, Google restricts your capability to transfer or move your Personal Google files into a Workspace folder in Google Drive. This is where Folgo's Move to Shared Drive feature will come in handy.
Move to Shared Drive is a great way for teams (internal & external) to move or transfer files in Google Drive.
Shared drives are a great way for teams (internal & external) to move or transfer files in Google Drive, collaborate, and reference the same files in Google Drive. But it can be confusing trying to tell who can access a file or folder in a shared drive, what permissions they have for that item, and what to do if you want to change access. To learn more about this, please visit Google's comprehensive tutorials. Learn more.
📌 Note: For this setup to work, a Workspace admin or user must create a Shared Drive - with you added as an external member designated (at least) with a Contributor role or access level. That is, you won't be able to add files/folders if you are given a Commenter or Viewer role. Learn more.
ℹ️ Info: Supported editions for this feature: Business Standard and Business Plus; Enterprise; Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus; Nonprofits; G Suite Business; Essentials. Learn more.
A) Steps for the Workspace Admin
1. Create a shared drive
Open Google Drive.
On the left, click Shared drives.
Shared drives are available only if your organization supports them. For help, contact your administrator.At the top, click the New button.
Enter a name and click Create.
2. Add members and set access levels
You can add people (internally within your organization and/or externally) with a Google account as members of a shared drive.
📌 By default, new members are given Content manager access, but you can change a member's access level. Learn more.
Open Google Drive.
At the left, click Shared drives and click a shared drive you are a member of.
At the top, click Manage members.
Add names, email addresses, or a Google Group.
New members must have a Google account. By default, new members are Content managers. They can upload, edit, move, or delete all files.To change:
▸ Permissions for a new member, click the Down arrow and choose an option.
▸ Whether new members get notified, click Notify people.Click Send.
B) Steps for the External Folders/Files Owner
(with a Personal Gmail account)
(with a Personal Gmail account)
1. Initialize the Move to Shared Drive feature
Now that the admin added you as a member to their Shared Drive:
Open Folgo > click Transfer / Request Folder ownership > Move to Shared Drive.
2. Select the folder to be shared
You will see a prompt saying 👈 Select a folder.
The 👈pointing finger prompts you to choose a folder to be shared within Google Drive (and not in the Folgo sidebar).
ℹ️ Folgo will behave like a file picker at this point.
Navigate/locate and select your folder to be shared.
Once selected, the Folgo UI will update and display your chosen folder to be shared.
3. Choose the Shared Drive
Click the SELECT A SHARED DRIVE button.
The 👈pointing finger prompts you to choose the relevant Shared Drive folder within Google Drive.
Once selected, the Folgo UI will update and display your chosen folder to be shared.
Click the SAVE button.
💡 Tip: Do not choose the Shared Drive folder from Google Drive's Navigation panel. Folgo won't be able to correctly identify which folder was selected. Choose the relevant Shared Drive folder exactly as shown in the screencast above.
4. Supplementary file management options
In this example, we chose the Copy file option.
ℹ️ Depending on your needs, you can choose to:
◯ Create a shortcut - to create live shortcuts linking to the original files.
◯ Copy file - to copy all files.
◯ Request ownership - available soon.
You can choose to either enable or disable the option to Automatically pause process before actual move (+ send me the list of file owners). This is on by default.
5. Activate the Move to Shared Drive process
Click the MOVE TO SHARED DRIVE button to initialize the process.
ℹ️ Once the move (or transfer) process is started, you can opt to close Folgo, Google Drive, your browser, or your computer.
This is possible (and safe) because Folgo will process everything using Google servers (operating behind the scenes).
6. Finishing touches
Now that the transfer process is initialized, the Folgo UI will display:
A. Your chosen folder to be shared.
B. Supplementary Process report (Inspection/Audit report) that contains all your files/folders and their metadata.
⚠️ Only open this when the transfer is complete.
And do not edit while the transfer is ongoing.
C. The move/transfer status report (Job progress).
D. The Actions menu.
Containing options to either Refresh, Pause, or Abort the operation.
Click REFRESH if you want to check the current status of the transfer process.
If you decide to refresh the status, this may take a while and the duration will depend on the number of folders/files that are being transferred.
☝️ Refreshing is purely optional since Folgo will process everything on the server-side (see note on Step 5 for more details).
7. Move request complete
Once the transfer request is finished, the Folgo UI will:
Prompt you that the transfer request is completed (with timestamp).
Display the total number of folder(s) and files.
You can open the Transfer folder and Process report.
☝️ To see this prompt in the Folgo UI, click the Refresh button when the entire process is done.
ℹ️ The files that were transferred/moved (in Step 2 of section B) by the Personal Google account user are now owned by the Workspace account domain (organization).
📌 The Move to Shared Drive process will copy or transfer all the files and subfolders, but it won't copy the root folder of the selected folder to be shared.
If you need to, create a subfolder dedicated for your files prior to performing the move/transfer process. Then specify this in the 👈 Select a folder prompt as shown in Step 2 of section B above.
📌 Important notes on Sharing settings and File Restrictions
If you have read-access to files or folders, but the file owner restricted their Sharing Settings - preventing you from copying them, then Folgo won’t be able to copy or duplicate them either. The accompanying Process report will indicate whether or not Folgo was able to copy each of your files.
To remedy this, ask the folder/files owner to change the Sharing Settings. Learn more about this in Google’s article on how to Stop, limit, or change sharing.
💡 Tip: For Personal Google Account users (between Gmail accounts), it's recommended to use our copy feature instead of the transfer feature.
ℹ️ The transfer ownership process is best suited for Google Workspace users within the same domain.