I shared my sheets from personal account to my business account and now they won't un-link

Kayleigh Colon

Hi,

I'm hoping someone has done the same thing and can help me figure out what to do :)

When I joined my current company, they did not use SmartSheet. I have my own personal Smartsheet account, that is linked to my email address, and I pay for it annually. I have templates and dashboards created and I started creating some for my new company. I created them and then used them as a way to suggest the company buy the license for everyone. They did, and now my work email and my team all have the business account.

Rather than creating all the sheets again from scratch in my work email account, I shared them from my personal to my work account and made my work account the owner/ admin. I thought this would transfer the sheets over, leaving now connection to my personal account. This is not what happened. It seems like everything is still linked to my personal account.

When I make changes in my work account, it is showing as my work email. Everything I do as admin in my work account, is tracing back to that work account. When I get sheet access requests, it goes to my work email. However, I just logged into my personal account, and it is billing me for seats for all the people in work who have access to the sheets. All their work emails are showing on my personal account.

I need a way to separate the 2 accounts completely, because I don't want to pay for my department's accounts, when the company is already paying for them. I also want to be able to still use my personal sheets if I move companies, without it changing the ones here at this company.

I hope that makes sense! Thank you in advance :) - Kayleigh

Isaac A.

Hi @Kayleigh Colon!

Thanks for the clear explanation! This is a very common situation, and it is fixable.

Here's what's happening: When you create an item (like a sheet or dashboard), you get Owner permissions, but the item itself is primarily "owned" by your plan. This is why simply transferring ownership to your work account didn't move the sheets off your personal plan. Your personal plan still "hosts" them, which is why it's billing you for your colleagues who access them.

First: Fix This for Future Items

You should set your Default Plan to your company's plan. This ensures any new items you create will live on the correct plan from the start.

1. In the Smartsheet app, select Account (bottom-left).
2. Go to Personal Settings… > Plan Info.
3. In the Default for creating column, select your company's plan and Save.

(Please note that changing the default plan doesn’t move items to the default plan. It only determines the plan where Smartsheet creates new items.)

Second: Fix Your Existing Items

To correct the plan that "owns" the items you already created, here are the self-service options you can try:

Transfer Owner permissions of a workspace: If your items are in a workspace, you can try transferring ownership of the entire workspace to your work account.

• Help Article: Transfer Owner permissions of a workspace

Save workspaces as new: You can copy the entire folder or workspace. This will create a new copy that will be "homed" on your new default plan (which you set in the first step).

• Help Article: Copy a folder or workspace

If you encounter any technical issues while trying this, it is a good case to route over to our Support Team via the Smartsheet Support Portal.

To resolve the billing issues on your personal account, I highly recommend using this specific link: Smartsheet Billing & Account Support.

For either channel, they can help you through a private channel. Just make sure to include as much information as possible in your support case, including your personal and work email addresses, the name of the assets, and any error messages you encounter.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Isaac.