How to Move Google Drive Contents from One Account to Another & Change Ownership

By Waleed MadniUpdated on April 5, 2024

Google Drive offers a convenient and hassle-free way of storing all your files on the cloud but what if you want to transfer that personal data to a new Google Drive account?

Uploading every single file to the new Drive account and then deleting it from the existing Drive can consume hours, if not days. Therefore, it is not a feasible approach for anyone.

Here’s a better and more efficient way of transferring an entire Google Drive to another, explained in easy steps.

1. Creating a new folder in Google Drive

Firstly, we will need to create a new folder in Google Drive. This folder will contain all of the contents of the Google Drive you want to move, so make sure to name it something memorable.

Open the Google Drive account with the contents in it.
Click on the New button at the top left of the screen.

Select the New Folder option.

Name the folder whatever you want and click on Create.

This concludes the first step of the process.

2. Copying the contents to the new folder

The next step of the process is to copy everything that you want transferred into the new folder.

Hold the Control, or Command key if you are on Mac, and select all the files that you want to transfer by simply clicking on them.
Now, click and hold your mouse button to drag the files to the new folder. You can also press Ctrl + X (or Command + X on Mac) then paste it in the folder directly by hitting Ctrl (or Command) + V.

The picture showing the transfer folder along with other folders on the Google Drive

If you have a lot of files on your Google Drive, this process can take a bit of time. There’s no need to rush. Make sure you transfer every file to the transfer folder. If you want to keep everything tidy and organized you can create additional folders for sorting further.

3. Sharing the transfer folder with the new account

The last step of the process is to share the transfer folder with the new account.

Left-click on the transfer folder and select the share option.

Drop-down menu showing the transfer option

Enter the email of the new account you want to transfer the files.
Change the access to “Editor” and click on the send button.

Now, the transfer folder containing all the files should be available on the new account.

How to access the transferred files on the new account

The transferred files will not be available on the main page of the new Google Drive. Here’s how you can locate and use the transferred files on the new account.

Open the new account to which you transferred the files from the previous Google Drive.
On the left side menu, choose the shared with me option.

The picture shows shared with me option that is among the other main options of the Google Drive

You will be able to see the transfer folder. Click it to access the files.

How to change ownership of the files

Upon opening any file transferred to the new account, you will notice that it still contains the previous Google Drive account as the owner. You can keep it as is or you can update the new account as the owner of the file. Here’s how you would do that.

Open the transfer folder on the new Google Drive account.
Hover over the file you want to transfer ownership of and left-click on it.
From the drop-down menu, select the make a copy option.

Drag and drop the copied file to the My Drive section.
Refresh the main page of the Google Drive and you will be able to see the file with updated ownership.

Unfortunately, you will need to do this process on each file you want to change the ownership of. There are other ways of changing ownership, however, they involve deleting the previous account which is not something we would recommend doing.

To speed up this process you can first make copies of all the files. Then by using the CTRL key on PC or Command key on Mac you can select all the newly copied files at once and drag them to the My Drive section.