Requesting Ownership Transfer of Google Drive Files

Note: This will only work for data within the Brown domain. You cannot change ownership from Brown accounts to personal Gmail accounts.

To see files that are shared with you, but you are not the owner, you can search your Drive for files owned by others. The general format for this search is "owner:<owner's email address>." This will show you the files that the owner has granted visibility or edit rights to you.

If you see a file that is shared, and you don't know the owner, you can identify the current owner by taking the steps below:

1.  Open Google Drive.
   1. For each file or folder you want to review, right-click on the item and select Share.
      
      
   2. In the sharing settings, you will see the current owner listed.
      
      
2. To have ownership transferred, to you, contact the current owner and request them to transfer ownership of the file. They can do this in the sharing settings of the file, in the same manner, and modify the sharing settings to select a new owner.
3. Once they have completed that action, you can confirm that the ownership transfer was complete:
   1.  If you have notifications turned on for Google Drive, you will receive an email notification.
   2. You can verify the new ownership by re-confirming the sharing settings of the file.