Can You Transfer the Ownership of a Doc in SharePoint?

• Can You Transfer the Ownership of a Doc in SharePoint?
• How to Transfer the Ownership of a Doc in SharePoint [2 Ways]
• Bonus Tip: How to Transfer SharePoint Documents to Another Account
• Conclusion

Can You Transfer the Ownership of a Doc in SharePoint?

The truth is that you cannot directly transfer ownership of a document in SharePoint. However, there are workarounds that you can use to achieve the same result by adjusting the permissions or transferring the doc to another account. Since you may need to change the permissions, let’s first figure out the different permissions in SharePoint.

How to Transfer the Ownership of a Doc in SharePoint [2 Ways]

Now you know the answer to “Can you transfer the ownership of a doc in SharePoint?” is "you cannot do it directly". It is time to see how to alternatively grant others full control permission to get the ownership of the document.

Way 1. Grant Full Control Permission to the User

If you are the owner of this site and need to give the ownership of just one document to another user, this method is right for you.

Step 1. Open SharePoint and navigate to the document.

Step 2. Select the document and click the 3-dot icon next to it. Then, choose “Manage Access” in the dropdown menu.

Step 3. Tap the 3-dot icon in the upper-right corner of the pop-up window and select “Advanced settings”.

Step 4. Select the member you want to transfer ownership to.

Step 5. Choose the “Edit User Permissions” option in the upper bar. Then, tick the “Full Control” option and click “OK” to save the changes.

Way 2. Make the User a Site Owner

If the user needs to control more documents rather than just one, you can make them the site owner.

Step 1. Open SharePoint and go to the desired site.

Step 2. Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner and choose “Site permissions”.

Step 3. Tap the “Share site” button and add the user whom you want to transfer ownership to.

Step 4. Extend the menu of “Site visitors – no control” and find the user added before. Then, click the downward arrow and choose “Full control”.

Step 5. Extend the menu of “Site owners – full control” and you can see another user becomes the owner of this site, too.

Bonus Tip: How to Transfer SharePoint Documents to Another Account

If you have multiple SharePoint accounts and plan to quickly transfer documents from one to another, using MultCloud can be your best choice. MultCloud is a professional cloud-to-cloud transfer, sync, and backup service. You can add your multiple SharePoint Online accounts to MultCloud and manage all the files altogether in one tab.

After adding the SharePoint accounts, you can copy, cut, delete, rename, and share the files on MultCloud. Besides, you can utilize the “Cloud Transfer” or “Copy to” function to directly transfer files between different accounts.

Except for the basic transfer function, there are some features you can apply to your “Cloud Transfer” task to make it smarter.

Option 1: Use Cloud Transfer

Step 1. Go to MultCloud and click “Get started for free” to register for a new account.

Step 2. Add a SharePoint account to MultCloud by clicking “Add Cloud” and the SharePoint Online logo. Then, you will log in to your SharePoint account and allow MultCloud to access your files. After adding one account, add another in the same way.

Step 3. Select the “Cloud Transfer” function in the left sidebar and choose the source and destination SharePoint accounts.

Step 4. Open “Options” to check the transfer settings. Then, you can choose to use “Schedule”, “Filter”, and “Email” to customize your task. After all the settings, tap the “Transfer Now” button to initiate this task.

Option 2: Use “Copy to”

Step 1. Create a MultCloud account and add your SharePoint accounts to it.

Step 2. Open the source SharePoint account and select the files you want to transfer.

Step 3. Click the “Copy to” function in the upper bar and choose another account as the destination. Then, tap the “OK” button to start transferring.

Conclusion

Can you transfer the owership of a doc in SharePoint? The answer is yes, but not in a direct way. There are 2 workarounds: you can grant the document’s full control permission to another user or add another user as the owner of the site.

What’s more, if you want to transfer files between different SharePoint accounts, try MultCloud for free! It offers the “Cloud Transfer” and “Copy to” functions to help you directly transfer SharePoint files between accounts without downloading and uploading.