Considerations for Changing a Record’s Owner

When you change a record’s owner, some items that are related to the record transfer to the new owner.

Available in: Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience

Available in: Essentials, Group, Professional, Enterprise Performance, Unlimited, Developer, and Contact Manager Editions

Note Automatic triggers that change record ownership can affect which object details users see. Sometimes, a user can enter information that is then immediately hidden from them when an automatic trigger changes the object's owner.

Important Workflow rules that update owners don’t also transfer associated items. To ensure transfer, click Change next to the owner’s name in a record and make your transfer selections.

Record	Transferred Items
Account	Contacts owned by the previous account owner and are related to the account transfer to the new owner automatically. The account owner’s open opportunities transfer automatically. To transfer open opportunities owned by others, select Transfer open opportunities owned by others. When you select this option, ownership of those opportunities transfers regardless of your access to them. The opportunity owner change doesn’t invoke any automations, such as flows or Apex triggers, because it cascades from an account owner change. To transfer the account owner’s closed opportunities to the new account owner, select Transfer account owner’s closed opportunities. Closed opportunities owned by others don’t transfer. The opportunity owner change doesn’t invoke any automations, such as flows or Apex triggers, because it cascades from an account owner change. Contracts with a status of Draft or In Approval transfer automatically. The new owner has read-only access to contracts with a status of Activated. Orders with a status of Draft, with or without a transferring contract, transfer automatically. The new owner has read-only access to orders with a status of Activated. To transfer the owner’s open cases, select Transfer account owner’s open cases. To transfer all of the owner’s cases, select Transfer all of this account owner’s cases. Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic transfer. The owner’s open activities transfer automatically. Closed activities don’t transfer. To keep account team members with an account when the owner changes, select Keep account team. To delete the team, deselect this option. This action only applies to team members added by a Salesforce admin, the account owner, or someone higher in the role hierarchy. Team members added by users with group-based access are removed even if Keep account team is selected. To keep opportunity team members with an opportunity when the account owner changes, select Keep opportunity teams with transferred opportunities. To delete the team, deselect this option. To transfer the account owner’s closed cases to the new account owner when the account owner changes, select Transfer account owner’s closed cases. In Salesforce Classic only, divisions transfer to the new account owner’s division when you select Change division. When changing the owners of multiple accounts via SOAP API, all accounts must have the same old owner and the same new owner. To change ownership of accounts with different owners, use separate API requests.
Campaign	Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic Open activities owned by the original record owner
Case	Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic Open activities that are owned by the original record owner. Closed activities don’t transfer. To transfer ownership of a case, the new owner must already have at least Read access to its associated parent account via sharing features. Or, the user who is transferring the record must be able 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. Otherwise, the ownership transfer can’t be completed.
Contact	Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic Open activities that are owned by the original contact owner. Closed activities don’t transfer. To transfer ownership of a contact, the new owner must already have at least Read access to its associated parent account via sharing features. Or, the user who is transferring the record must be able to share the associated parent account. The account owner, 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. Otherwise, the ownership transfer can’t be completed.
Contract	Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic Open activities that are owned by the original record owner Orders with Draft status
Custom object	Open activities that are owned by the original record owner (Salesforce Classic only) Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic
Knowledge	Changing an article's ownership is available in Lightning Experience only. To change ownership, select Change Owner either from a Knowledge list view of draft articles or a draft article’s Knowledge home record. When you change the ownership of a draft article from a Knowledge home record, you can also change the ownership of its archived and published versions at the same time. You can change the ownership of multiple draft articles at once from a Knowledge list view. You can change ownership to a queue and to a user. Anyone in a queue can act as the article's owner. A user can only change an article's ownership if their profile permissions allow it.
Lead	Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic transfer. Files in Lightning don’t. Open activities that are owned by the original record owner (except when you change lead ownership using the Assign using active assignment rule checkbox)
Opportunity	Open activities that are owned by the current opportunity owner transfer. Closed activities don’t transfer. When you transfer ownership of a related account, you have the option to transfer open opportunities owned by others. This option transfers ownership of all of those opportunities, regardless of your access to them. This opportunity owner change doesn’t invoke any automations, such as flows or Apex triggers, because it cascades from an account owner change. Opportunity team members only when the Keep Opportunity Team option is selected. When opportunity teams transfer, opportunity splits, opportunity product splits, custom field values, and any notes on splits are preserved and split percentages are assigned to the new owner. Attachments and notes in Salesforce Classic transfer. Files in Lightning don’t. To transfer ownership of an opportunity, the new owner must already have at least Read access to its associated parent account via sharing features. Or, the user who is transferring the record must be able to share the associated parent account. The account owner, 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. Otherwise, the ownership transfer can’t be completed.
Order	Open tasks Future events Items don’t transfer if either the original or new owner is a member of a queue.

Note You can't transfer events you’re invited to and don't own.

Considerations for Changing a Record’s Owner

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Considerations for Changing a Record’s Owner

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