Document Ownership and Google Apps for Education

A funny thing happened along the way as I sought to transfer my Google Apps data from my account with my previous school to the new account at my current school: I found out that one cannot transfer ownership of documents created in Google Apps for Education to another account. So I am left with many collaborative documents inside an old account.

Fortunately, this is not a critical issue for me as I have a good relationship with the folks at my previous school. They will keep my account there open as long as needed. However, this was an unforeseen complication. Perhaps I missed a memo someplace, but I did not realize that document ownership rules were so strict inside Google Apps for Education. Ownership may be transferred through common Google accounts, but not with Google Apps for Education.

Don't get caught unaware. For those of you using Google Apps for Education, here are two considerations and ideas for managing document ownership:

• Transfer the documents to a new account using Google Takeout. This is an official protocol used by Google for transferring files between accounts. While your data is preserved in a new account, the files are saved as traditional document files, not interactive documents, so any shares would need to be established once more. This is not the most convenient method when one does a lot of collaborative work, but at least one's data is preserved.
• Consider creating a separate Google account outside of Google Apps for Education for the creation of documents that are meant to be shared. With this step one has no issues with document ownership.