Google TakeOut Hack....Transfer Ownership of all files

For a long time I have sat on a Google Hack that I think changed my life. I have wanted to share it with others and have done so by word of mouth, until today. I hope to share it with others and that is where this post begins. I am in love with Google and I have been since the beginning...seriously 11/20/2008 (Gmail was beta 2007). However, there is one huge area of Google that needs some improvement, TRANSFERRING OWNERSHIP of DRIVE FILES between Google Apps Accounts. 

Now this process is fairly straight forward. You open a Google Doc, you click to share it with another user, you change their permission to IS OWNER and away you go. However, if you are working for an institution of company that uses Google Apps for Education or Business and end up changes jobs, then you will want to transfer all those files. The process quickly becomes annoying. And to make matters worse you cannot transfer ownership from one Google Apps Domain to another. Meaning if you work for company ABC with an email name@ABC.com and then change jobs to company XYZ, you can not transfer those files to name@XYZ.com and make your new account the owner. You may share them but how long will your old company leave your old account open?

So, Google created Google TakeOut to help with this matter (Instructions here). Simply open TakeOut with your account you are leaving, choose the necessary files and data, click TakeOut and viola. You have a nice zip file of all your data. However, the files in your Google Drive are no longer Google Doc versions but their converted sometimes distorted parallel counterpart, Word & PowerPoint. This may sound good, but if you have ever used the conversion you know it sometimes can not be pretty. 

Until I discovered this Google Drive File Transfer trick I had put up with either sharing old files from my old school district to a personal Google account or trying to download those files and convert them to word and take up tons of space on my computer. 

Here is the solution for Google Drive File Transfer Trick (GDFTT for short): This is not for the weary Google Drive users. 

I will reference using a MacBook, but the same process will work with a PC. And describe the simplest method for this to work. This works going from one domain to any other domain. 

For this example, lets say we are leaving old@ABC.com and transferring to new@XYZ.org

Step 1: Open https://drive.google.com, sign into your old@ABC.com

Step 2: Create a new Folder for all the files you want to transfer and give it any name.

Step 3: Move all the files into this new folder

Step 4: Share the folder to your new@XYZ.org account. Sign into new@XYZ.org account and make sure the shared folder is added to your My Drive. 

Step 5: Download Google Drive App for you MacBook or PC

Step 6: Open and Sign into Google Drive App with your new account (new@XYZ.org) on your computer. I only choose to sync the one file that I am sharing. Note that any file located in My Drive that is not in a folder will always sync. Don't worry about these files unless you want them, then move them into the created shared Folder. 

Step 7: Let the shared folder is sync to your computer

Step 8: Right click and duplicate or make a copy using Finder or Windows on your computer.

Step 9: Let this copied folder sync with Google. Complete

You now have a new copied folder that contains all the files, in their original format, with new ownership rights. You also, have removed all share settings and will want to update any links inside documents to the new files. This process can take time. But at least you have a copy of all the docs and work those changes over time as needed. It is worth being able to have all the files downloaded and transfer of ownership.