Applies to

Smartsheet
  • Pro
  • Business
  • Enterprise

For more information about plan types and included capabilities, see the Smartsheet Plans page.

Capabilities

Who can use this capability

You need a SysAdmin and a billing contact to manage licences. They can be the same person, but it's best practice to have more than one SysAdmin. 

Find out if this capability is included in Smartsheet Regions or Smartsheet Gov.

Manage licenses when transferring items

You can remove a license from a user. When you remove a license, you’ll decide if you want to transfer the items owned by that user or remove them without transferring the items. You cannot transfer a Smartsheet account, but you can change user roles, contact information, or billing information for that account.

PLANS

  • Smartsheet
  • Pro
  • Business
  • Enterprise

For more information about plan types and included capabilities, see the Smartsheet Plans page.

Permissions

You need a SysAdmin and a billing contact to manage licences. They can be the same person, but it's best practice to have more than one SysAdmin. 

Find out if this capability is included in Smartsheet Regions or Smartsheet Gov.

Assign licenses to users when you transfer items

If you have not reached the license limit in your plan, you can assign a license to your target user then transfer all owned items to them upon deletion of the user that they are replacing. If you’ve reached your license limit, then you’ll need to free up a license to complete the transfer:

  1. Log in to Smartsheet Admin Center as a System Admin, select the account icon, then select User Management.
  2. To open the Edit User panel, select the licensed user whose access you want to transfer, and toggle the Licensed User switch to off. 

  3. In the Transfer Ownership and Remove License window, select Remove without transferring items. This will free up the license so that it can be reassigned.
     

    All of the user's owned sheets remain accessible to any shared users. If the user was a Group Admin, you will have to transfer their owned groups to an active Group Admin or System Admin. This will not affect any sharing access at the group level. 

  4. If the new user has already been added to your plan as a free user, assign them a license. If they have not been added to your plan yet, select Add User at the top left of the User Management page to send them an invitation with the Licensed User role.
  5. When the new user accepts the invitation, their Member Status in User Management will change from Invited to Accepted.

  6. Once the new user has accepted the invitation, find the previous user in User Management and open the Edit User panel. Select the three-dot menu icon at the upper right to Transfer Owned Items. Once the items are transferred to the new user, the sheets that were read-only in step 2 will be reactivated.
     

    Only item ownership is transferred. Sheets owned by other users and shared with the previous user will need to be re-shared with the new user. 

Sheets in the previous user’s sheets directory will be placed in a Transferred from (username) folder in the new owner's browse directory (accessible from the left panel). Sheets in workspaces will remain in established workspaces. All sheets retain their sharing permissions and sheet data. The previous owner can now be removed from sharing.

If the previous user owns sheets in a workspace that is owned by someone else, and the target owner is not the Owner or an Admin of the workspace, then the sheets will be moved to the Transferred from (username) folder in the new owner's Sheets directory. The sharing permissions from the workspace will be retained at the sheet level, but the sheets will no longer be in the workspace.

Optionally, you can remove the user whose access was transferred from the account. Learn more about the admin center.

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