Transfer Ownership Without Emailing User

[Damian Csakai]

Is it possible to transfer ownership without emailing the user on each individual file? We have a situation where a transfer was completed through the ownership transfer GUI in Google Admin and now we need to transfer only those files owned by the previous owner to a new user. I initially used gam user UserA add driveacl ID UserB role owner and got hit with exceeding quota but also quickly realized UserB was getting hundreds of emails!

[Ross Scroggs]

You csn make the new owner a writer and then update them to owner, there will be no email

gam user UserA add driveacl ID user UserB role writer

gam user UserA update driveacl ID UserB role owner

Ross

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Ross Scroggs

Ross.S...@gmail.com

On Mar 19, 2025, at 9:38 AM, Damian Csakai <damian...@gapps.mindshift.com> wrote:

Is it possible to transfer ownership without emailing the user on each individual file? We have a situation where a transfer was completed through the ownership transfer GUI in Google Admin and now we need to transfer only those files owned by the previous owner to a new user. I initially used gam user UserA add driveacl ID UserB role owner and got hit with exceeding quota but also quickly realized UserB was getting hundreds of emails!

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[Damian Csakai]

Thanks Ross, 

I was under the impression that the user was already a writer of the files that were being transferred BUT I cannot confirm 100%. Thanks for this! I suppose I could run making them a writer of all files first, even if they already are a writer it wouldn't change anything, and then run again making them an owner.

[Damian Csakai]

Sadly, it looks like this didn't work?

UserB was already a writer of a given document, confirmed by checking the show fileinfo <id> permission

I then transferred ownership using gam user <userA> add drivefileacl ID UserB role owner and I see an email regarding ownership being updated to the user in the M365 Exchange Mail Flow.

It looks like it was a PDF and not a Google Doc, Sheet, etc. Not sure if that matters. There are all sorts of file formats yet to be transerred.

On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 12:51:54 PM UTC-4 Ross Scroggs wrote:

[Michael Porter]

In my experience, using our own API programs, owner changes "always" generate email.  You can suppress email when granting writer, I believe.  I say "always" because I've changed owner on millions of files before and Google did not send millions of emails from what I can tell.  The recipient can determine the messages by sender and subject and create a filter to manage the incoming messages.  Perhaps you can add the required filter using gam?

Thanks,

Mike

Mike Porter

mi...@udel.edu

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[Damian Csakai]

That might be our only option, to create a temporary filter. Microsoft Exchange is used in this case, so I could PowerShell the rule creation for the duration of the transfer and then remove the rule afterwards. The hurdle is the rate limit on sharing files that seemingly hit my first go around.

[Ross Scroggs]

If you add an ACL to a file making someone an owner, there is always an email.

If you update an ACL on a file updating the role from writer to owner, there is no email unless yu specifically request it.

Ross

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Ross Scroggs

Ross.S...@gmail.com

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[Damian Csakai]

And now I see the error in my ways. Apologies and thank you again Ross. I had failed to change the 'add' to 'update'. That did the trick!