Sharepoint 2010 Bulk Change Document Owner

Question

Is there a method to change the Document owner for multiple documents in a document library with versioning?

We have a large number of documents which are assigned to a user who no longer belongs to the company, and a large number which need to be 'handed over' from one user to another.

Answer 1

If Document Owner is a User field then using PowerShell would be your best approach:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell
$web = Get-SPWeb "http://server/sites/website"
$library = $web.Lists["Display Name of your library"]
$oldUser = $web.EnsureUser("DOMAIN\OldUserAccount")
$newUser = $web.EnsureUser("DOMAIN\NewUserAccount")

foreach ($item in $library.Items)
{
   $userfield = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldUserValue($web,$item["DocumentAuthorColumnInternalName"].ToString())
   $login = $userfield.User.LoginName
   if ($login -eq $oldUser.LoginName)
   {
      $item["DocumentAuthorColumnInternalName"] = $newUser
      #if you are using default "Author" column, you need to set the following as well:
      #$item.Properties["vti_author"] = $newUser.LoginName
      $item.UpdateOverwriteVersion() #this saves changes without incrementing the version
   }
   $login = $null
}

$web.Dispose();