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Transfer Records

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Transfer Records

You can transfer record ownership in Salesforce using several methods, depending on the object and how many records you want to transfer. Who can transfer a record and which permissions are required depend on whether you’re transferring a single record or multiple records in the same operation.

Required Editions

Available in: Salesforce Classic

Available in: Contact Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Developer, and Database.com Editions

Accounts, Campaigns, Contacts, Contracts, Leads, and Cases aren’t available in Database.com.

Contracts are available in: Performance and Developer Editions and in Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions with the Sales Cloud.

Transferring a Single Record

You can transfer a single record for any object with an Owner field.

When territory management isn’t enabled, you can transfer a single record if these conditions are met:

  • You have the appropriate Edit permission.
  • You’re the record owner or above the record owner in the role hierarchy. Or, you have the Modify All Data permission or the Modify All Records permission for the given object, which permits you to transfer any record, regardless of who owns the record.
  • The new owner has at least the Read permission on the object.
  • You have any additional permissions required for the object. See the “Additional Permission Requirements by Object” section.

Or, alternatively, if the object’s sharing setting is Public Full Access or Public Read/Write/Transfer, all users can transfer ownership of that type of record.

The Transfer Record permission is intended for transferring multiple records and doesn’t let you transfer single records unless you already meet the previously mentioned conditions.

Note
Note When territory management is enabled, you can enable users assigned to territories to transfer the accounts in their territories, even when they aren’t the record owner. The new owner must still have at least the Read permission on Accounts.

Transferring Multiple Records

The available methods for transferring multiple records depend on the object.

Method Available Objects
Transfer multiple records by selecting the records from a list view and clicking Change Owner Cases, leads, and custom objects, which can belong to either a user or a queue
Transfer multiple records using the Mass Transfer tool Accounts, leads, custom objects, and additional standard objects (can vary by Salesforce org)

To transfer multiple records, you aren’t required to be the record owner or above the record owner in the role hierarchy. Instead, these permissions are required, as well as any requirements listed in the “Additional Permission Requirements by Object” section.

Note
Note When using the Change Owner action from a list view, the new owner also must have at least Read permission on the object. This requirement doesn’t apply when using the Mass Transfer tool.
Object Required Permissions
Accounts

Transfer Record

AND

Edit on accounts
Leads

Transfer Leads OR Transfer Record

AND

Edit on leads
Cases

Transfer Cases OR Transfer Record

AND

Edit on cases

AND

Read and Transfer Record on related accounts
Custom objects

Transfer Record

AND

Edit on the object
Additional standard objects as available in your Salesforce org (Mass Transfer only)

Transfer Record

AND

Edit on the object

Additional Permission Requirements by Object

Object Additional Requirements
Campaigns Marketing User feature license
Accounts with related contacts who are external users

Manage Roles

OR

Manage External Users
Cases, contacts, and opportunities

One of these conditions must be true:

  • The new owner must already have at least read access to its associated parent account via sharing features.
  • The user who is transferring the record must have the ability to share the associated parent account. The account owner, Salesforce admins, users who are above the account owner in the role hierarchy, and users with the Modify All Records permission on accounts have this ability.
  • In addition, if territory management isn’t enabled, when a case is related to an account, a user must have Read and Transfer Record permissions on the account.

Permission Requirements for Additional Scenarios

Scenario Required Permissions Additional Requirements
To transfer a partner account:

Manage Users

OR

Manage External Users

 The new owner must also have the Manage External Users permission
To transfer a Customer Portal account: None

The current owner can transfer the account to any user in your same role without special permissions. You can’t transfer a Customer Portal account to a user with a higher or lower role.

You can’t transfer an account with Customer Portal users to a partner user.
To transfer a portal account with both Customer and Partner Portal users: Manage Users You can’t transfer a Customer Portal account to a user with a higher or lower role.
To transfer a record to an inactive user:

Update Records with Inactive Owners (API only)

AND

Edit on the object

Available only for accounts, assets, cases, contacts, leads, notes, opportunities, orders, PersonAccount, ServiceContract, and custom objects.

Note
Note In Salesforce Classic, Apex code can't be used to update lead record owners to inactive users, even when users have the "Set Audit Fields upon Record Creation" and "Update Records with Inactive Owners" permissions.
To transfer a record from an inactive user:

Update Records with Inactive Owners

AND

Transfer Leads OR Transfer Cases OR Transfer Record (Classic only)

AND

Edit on the object

 Available only for accounts, assets, cases, contacts, leads, notes, opportunities, orders, PersonAccount, ServiceContract, and custom objects.

See Also

 
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