Transfer Owner permissions of a workspace

When responsibilities change in your organization, you may need to transfer or take ownership (i.e., take Owner permissions) of a workspace and all its items.

A user must first be shared to the workspace to qualify as an Owner permissions candidate for that workspace. Learn more about sharing workspaces.

Transfer Owner permissions of workspaces

1. Browse to the workspace you own and want to transfer.
2. At the top-right of the workspace, select the Share button. The Share workspace form appears.
3. In the form's People with access section, select the recipient's current permission level and select Make owner from the permission level list. A confirmation window appears.
4. (Optional) If you want to transfer Owner permissions of your items in the workspace, select the checkbox Give them ownership of your items in the workspace as well.
5. Select OK to confirm the Ownership permissions transfer.

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 chose to transfer ownership of all the workspace items, they now own the items too.

If the request is declined or isn't fulfilled within seven days, it will expire. You must repeat the process to generate a new transfer request.

Request Owner permissions of a workspace you're shared to

You can request to take Owner permissions of any workspace you’re shared to. Here are the steps:

1. Browse to the workspace you want Owner permissions for.
2. At the top-right of the workspace, select the Share button to open the Share workspace form.
3. In the form's People with access section, select the current sharing permission level next to your name and choose Owner from the permission level list.
4. Confirm whether you want to also become 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 collaborators that are shared to the workspace, then you may be shared to the workspace through a Contact Group instead of shared as a user. In this case, contact the workspace owner directly. See Use a Group to Send or Share Information for more information about Groups.

Additional information

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

• If there are shared users outside of the recipient’s approved domain sharing list, they will continue to have access to the workspace. Information about approved domain sharing can be found here: Configure a safe sharing policy 
• To take Owner permissions of a workspace from somebody who's no longer available, their System Admin should delete them and transfer Owner permissions of all their Smartsheet items to an active user. See Admin Center: Add, edit, or deactivate users for more information. If needed, the new Owner can then transfer Owner permissions of the specific workspace to you.