Transfer Owner permissions of a workspace

When responsibilities change in your organization, you may need to transfer ownership or become the owner of a workspace and all its items. Learn how to do it.

Who can use this?

Plans:

  • Pro
  • Business
  • Enterprise

Permissions:

  • Owner 

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

 

To become the Owner of a workspace, you must have Admin permissions to it first. Learn more about sharing workspaces.

Transfer Owner permissions of workspaces

  1. Find the workspace you own and want to transfer.
  2. At the top-right of the workspace, select the dropdown next to the Share button. The Share workspace option appears.
  3. In the Manage access section, select the person you want to assign and select Make owner from the permission dropdown. A confirmation window appears.
  4. (Optional) If you want to transfer Owner permissions for your items in the workspace, tick the box next to Give them ownership of your items in the workspace as well.
  5. Select OK to confirm the transfer of Ownership permissions.

Consider the following

  • Depending on recipients' personal notification settings, recipients receive an alert of the pending transfer in their notification center or email inbox.
  • If recipients accept the Owner permissions transfer, they become an Admin on the workspace. If you selected the option to transfer ownership of all the workspace items, they now own the items too.
  • If the recipient declines or doesn't complete the request within seven days, the request expires. You must repeat the process to generate a new transfer request.

Request Owner permissions of a workspace you're shared to

This is how you can request Owner permissions of any workspace you’re shared to:

  1. Find the workspace you want Owner permissions for.
  2. At the top-right of the workspace, select the dropdown next to the Share button to open the Share workspace form.
  3. In the form's Manage access section, select the current sharing permission level next to your name and choose Owner from the permission level list.
  4. Confirm whether you also want to become the Owner of the current owner’s items in the workspace. Then, select Send Transfer Request.

The current Owner receives an email with a link to approve the transfer request.

If you don’t see your name in the list of shared collaborators, then you might be shared to the workspace through a Contact Group instead of as a user. Contact the workspace owner directly. 

See Admin Center: Manage Smartsheet contact groups for more information about Groups.

Additional information

When you transfer the workspace Owner permissions, keep the following in mind:

  • Any previously shared users outside of the new owner's approved domain sharing list retain access to the workspace after the permissions transfer. Learn more about approved domain sharing in Configure a safe sharing policy 
  • If the workspace Owner is no longer part of the company, the System Admin should delete the user and transfer Owner permissions of all their Smartsheet items to an active user. See Admin Center: Add, edit, or deactivate users for more information.