How to Change Account Owners in Salesforce

In this Salesforce tutorial, we will learn how to change account owners in Salesforce. We will discuss the method of changing owners of accounts in Salesforce Lightning and Classic editions.

There are two ways to change the owner of accounts, the first way is to change the account owner from the record page in the edit window, and the second way is to transfer mass accounts to another user with the help of Data transfer.

While Working as a Salesforce system admin, I recently got a task to transfer some accounts from one user to a new user. Basically, I had to change the ownership of these accounts because the current user of these accounts was leaving the company, so I had to assign these accounts to another user.

Change Account Owners

In Salesforce, changing account owners means handing over access to the account records from one user to another within the organization. This transfer of account ownership also includes the data and records related to the opportunities and cases within the accounts.

You might need to change the Sharing settings of the accounts before assigning it to the new user so that the new owner can have read and write access to these account records.

In the below examples, I have explained how to change ownership for single accounts and how we can change ownership of multiple accounts.

Change Account Owner in Salesforce Lightning

To change account owners in Salesforce Lightning, first log in to your Salesforce account and follow the steps below.

1. On the Setup page of Salesforce Lightning, click on the App Launcher and search for Accounts, and from the Items section select Accounts.

2. In the Accounts window, we can see a list of accounts and from here select an account in which you have to change the owner. In this example, I have selected the accounts Edge Communications.

3. In the record page of the selected account, click on the dropdown arrow that is on the upper right side of the screen, and from the options in the dropdown select the option Change Owner.

4. As we click on the Change Owner, a new window will appear, and from here select the account from the search bar and activate the checkboxes of the records to transfer the access of records to the new owner.

At last, click on the Submit button to apply changes to the account record.

As we click on the Submit button, the account owner will be changed and we can also view this change in the details section of the account’s record page.

Now we have successfully changed the Account Owner, with the help of the above steps in Salesforce Lightning.

Transfer Ownership of Multiple Accounts in Salesforce Lightning

Transferring ownership of multiple accounts means changing owners or mass account records. To change owners of multiple accounts, navigate to the Setup page of Lightning and follow the below steps.

1. On the Setup page of lighting, go to the Quick Find box and search for Mass transfer records, and under the heading Data select Mass Transfer Records.

2. In the setup of Mass Transfer records, click on Transfer Accounts.

3. In this window, we need to select the accounts and other details to transfer the ownership from one user to another.

• In the Transfer from field select the user having the current ownership of the accounts.
• In the Transfer to field select the user that is going to be the new owner.
• Activate all checkboxes to transfer records related to Opportunities and Cases to the new owner.
• Select the criteria to find account records. I have selected criteria as Active to select active accounts and kept operators as equals.
• Click on the Find button to generate account records.

4. As we click on the Find button, we get the accounts according to the criteria we have given.

Now select the accounts that you have to transfer to another owner and click on the Transfer button. In this example, I have selected all accounts to transfer to the new owner.

On clicking the transfer button, the accounts we assigned to the new owner that we have selected. You can view the change in ownership of accounts on the Accounts window in the Account Owner Alias column.

In this way, we have successfully changed the ownership of multiple accounts with the help of the above steps in Salesforce Lightning.

Change Account Owner in Salesforce Classic

To change the account’s owner in Salesforce Classic, log in to your Salesforce account, switch to the classic edition, and follow the steps below.

1. On the Home page of Salesforce Classic, click on the Accounts tab.

2. In the Accounts window we can see a list of recently viewed accounts. To access all accounts, click on the Go button.

3. Now we can see all account records of the org, and from here click on the account in which you have to change the owner. In this example, I have selected the account Burlington Textiles Corp.

4. On the record page of the account, go to the Account Detail section and in the field Account Owner click on the Change button.

5. In the Select New Owner section, enter the name of the new owner in the Owner label. Activate the checkboxes to transfer the records related to opportunities and cases to the new owner, and after this click on the Save button.

As we click on the Save button, the account will be changed with the new owner we have selected above, and we can view this change in the Account Detail section of the account record page.

Transfer Ownership of Multiple Accounts in Salesforce Classic

In Salesforce, transferring ownership of multiple accounts means changing owners or mass account records. To change owners of multiple accounts, switch to the Classic edition and follow the below steps.

1. On the Home page of Salesforce Classic, click on the Setup tab that is on the right side of the screen.

2. In the Setup of Salesforce Classic, go to the Quick Find box and search for Mass Records, and from the options in the dropdown select Mass Records Transfer.

3. In the setup window of Mass transfer records, click on the option Transfer Account, which is at the top of the list.

4. In this step, we will select the current and new users to transfer the account’s ownership and find the records in which we have to change the owner.

• In the Transfer from field select the user having the current ownership of the accounts.
• In the Transfer to field select the user that is going to be the new owner.
• Activate all checkboxes to transfer data and records within the accounts related to Opportunities and Cases to the new owner.
• Select the criteria to find account records. I have selected criteria as Account Owner Alias to select active accounts and kept operators as equals. In the third column enter the alias name of the current owner.
• Click on the Find button to generate account records.

5. As we click on the Find button, the account records will be generated according to the criteria we have added in the previous step.

Now select the Account that you have to transfer to the new user or owner and click on the Transfer button.

Now the selected account that we have transferred will be assigned to the new owner and we can also view the change of ownership in the Account records.

In this way, we have successfully changed the account owner for multiple records in Salesforce Classic with the help of the above steps.

Conclusion

In this Salesforce tutorial, we have learned about changing the Account owners of account records in Salesforce Lightning and Classic edition respectively.

We discussed the two possible ways to change the account owner and successfully changed the account owner of single records as well as multiple account records with the help of the above steps.

You may like to read:

• How to add a new Opportunity to Accounts in Salesforce
• Display Account Fields on an Opportunity Record Page in Salesforce