How to Transfer Ownership of Looker Studio Dashboard

Imagine this: your marketing manager, the creator of the all-important weekly performance dashboard in Looker Studio, is leaving the company. Or maybe you're wrapping up a project for a client and need to hand over the reporting assets. In either case, you need to transfer ownership of a critical dashboard, and you need it to be a clean handoff without breaking any data connections. This guide will walk you through exactly how to transfer ownership of a Looker Studio report, what you need to do beforehand, and how to handle any issues that pop up.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

Why You Can't Just Share It and Call It a Day

You might be thinking, "Can't I just change their permission to 'Editor' and be done with it?" While sharing is great for collaboration, it's not the same as ownership. The owner of a Looker Studio report has unique, ultimate control.

Think of it like a Google Doc. An editor can write and change things, but only the owner can:

• Permanently delete the report.
• Control who else can manage access.
• Transfer ownership to someone else.

If the original creator leaves your company and their Google account is deactivated, any reports they owned are at risk of being deleted. The dashboard they spent weeks perfecting could disappear forever. Transferring ownership ensures the report’s long-term safety and puts control in the right hands, creating a single source of truth that isn't tied to a single employee's account.

Before You Begin: A Quick Pre-Flight Check

Before you click a single button, make sure you have a few things sorted out. A little preparation here will prevent headaches later.

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

1. You Must Be a Member of the Same Organization

When transferring ownership within a company using Google Workspace, both you (the current owner) and the new owner must be part of the same organization. This is a security measure to prevent company assets from accidentally being transferred to external accounts. If you're handing off a dashboard to a freelancer or an external agency, you will not be able to transfer ownership unless they are added as a guest to your organization, which has its own IT implications.

2. The New Owner Must Have At Least Viewer Access Before You Can Transfer Ownership

You can't transfer ownership to someone who has no access to the report. You must first share the report with them, giving them at least Viewer privileges. In most cases, you’ll likely give them Editor access anyway, but even Viewer is enough to enable the ownership transfer option.

To check, just click the "Share" button and see if their name is on the list of people with access. If not, add them first.

3. Confirm You Are the Current Owner

This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often it's the source of the problem. Only the current owner can initiate a transfer. If you open a report and click "Share," you'll see your own name in the access list. Next to it, it should clearly say "Owner." If it says "Editor," you'll have to ask the current owner to perform the steps below.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Transferring Looker Studio Ownership

Once you've done your prep work, the actual transfer is quite simple and only takes a few clicks. Follow these steps carefully.

Step 1: Open Your Looker Studio Report

Navigate to lookerstudio.google.com and open the report you want to transfer. Wait for it to fully load.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

Step 2: Click the 'Share' Button

In the top right corner of the screen, you will find a prominent blue "Share" button. Click on it. This will open the 'Share with others' pop-up window, which is the same one you use to give people view or edit access.

Step 3: Find the New Owner

In the sharing dialog box, look under the "People with access" section. You should see a list of every Google user who currently has access to the report. Find the person you want to make the new owner. Remember, if they are not on this list, you need to add them first.

Step 4: Click the Dropdown Menu Next to Their Name

To the right of the person's email address, you'll see a dropdown menu that currently shows their access level (likely "Editor" or "Viewer"). Click on this dropdown menu to reveal more options.

Step 5: Select 'Make Owner'

At the bottom of the list of options, you will see "Make owner." Click it.

Note: If this option is grayed out or not visible, it means you are not the current owner of the report, or that the ownership cannot be transferred according to your organization's policies.

Step 6: Confirm the Transfer

Looker Studio will now show you a warning message, making sure you understand what you're doing. It will state: "Making this person the new owner will make you an editor. This action cannot be undone."

Read that one more time: this action cannot be undone. Once you make someone else the owner, you can't take it back on your own. They would have to transfer ownership back to you.

If you're 100% sure, click the blue "Yes" button to confirm.

And that's it! The transfer is instantaneous. You will now be listed as an "Editor," and the new owner will have full control.

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

Okay, It's Transferred. Now What?

One of the most common "gotchas" after a successful transfer is that the new owner opens the report and sees broken charts with a "Data Set Configuration Error" message.

This is almost always a data source credentials issue.

Looker Studio reports have two key components: the visual design (the report itself) and the data sources that feed it (like Google Analytics, Google Sheets, or BigQuery). The data source credentials determine how the report gets permission to access that data.

Often, the data source is using the creator's credentials. When you transfer ownership, the new owner may need to re-authenticate the data connection using their own Google account.

Here’s how the new owner can fix this:

1. In the report, go to the menu and click Resource > Manage added data sources.
2. Find the problematic data source in the list and click "Edit" next to it.
3. In the top left of the data source configuration screen, you’ll see "Data Credentials." It might say something like "[Creator's Name]'s Credentials." The new owner should click on that and change it to "Viewer's Credentials" or have them re-authenticate their user account to use their own credentials.
4. Click "Reconnect" in the upper right. Looker Studio will then re-validate the data source permissions.

Once refreshed, the charts should load perfectly.

Final Thoughts

Transferring ownership of a Looker Studio report is a straightforward process, but it requires being deliberate about permissions and data source credentials. By ensuring the new owner has access, carefully following the steps in the sharing menu, and then verifying the data connections, you guarantee a smooth and secure handoff of your team's valuable reporting assets.

Managing dashboards and permissions is often just one part of the wider challenge of reporting. A lot of time gets lost manually connecting data, refreshing reports, and building dashboards across dozens of different platforms. At Graphed, we created a solution that lets you skip this busywork entirely. We help you connect all your marketing and sales data sources in seconds, and then you can use simple, natural language to instantly build the dashboards and analyses you need. This frees you up to spend time acting on insights, not worrying about administrative hassles.