SharePoint site owner – Detailed Guide

Keep reading this article, if you want to know about SharePoint site owner and their roles and responsibilities. Here we will discuss:

• What are SharePoint site owners?
• SharePoint site owner permissions
• How to find SharePoint site owner in Office 365
• How to add owner to SharePoint site office 365
• change SharePoint Online site owner
• SharePoint site owner roles and responsibilities
• Get SharePoint Online site owner using PowerShell (Classic site and group connected site)
• SharePoint site owner vs member
• How to change SharePoint site owner PowerShell
• SharePoint online site owner training

So let us get started!

SharePoint Site Owner

Once you create a SharePoint site, then someone should be responsible to manage the site. There comes the role of a SharePoint site owner. A SharePoint Site owner is the user who will have the full control to a particular SharePoint site.

You can add multiple site owners to a SharePoint Online site or into a SharePoint 2013/2016/2019 site. These are also known as power users.

SharePoint site owners will have full control to the SharePoint site, and in an Office 365 group connected site, the site owners are automatically included as the SharePoint site owners.

SharePoint site owner roles and responsibilities

Now, let us try to understand the SharePoint site owner roles and responsibilities. The site owner is responsible for controlling the overall SharePoint site.

• They will be responsible to design the SharePoint site, they can change the Site title, site theme, etc.
• SharePoint Online site owners are responsible for managing permissions for the entire site. For example, you can give HR people access to a particular SharePoint Online list. So that only HR people can see the confidential data. Not only this, but SharePoint site owners also responsible for creating additional permission groups if required.
• Also, site owners are responsible for creating any subsites if required. Even site owners can delete SharePoint site or subsites as and when required.
• SharePoint Online site owners can add, edit, and delete web pages, can add, edit, and delete web parts, as a part of the SharePoint online site owner responsibilities.
• Apart from this, there are a few tasks you can do within a SharePoint site if you are a SharePoint site owner.

SharePoint Site Owner vs Site Collection Administrator

Before going further, we should understand properly the difference between a SharePoint site owner and site collection administrator.

In classic SharePoint Online or in SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, or in SharePoint 2019 server, there is the concept of the SharePoint site collection.

In SharePoint on-premises version, SharePoint will have web applications and under one web application, there will be multiple site collections. And each site collection there will be one or more sites and subsites.

In the above kind of site structure, there will be Site collection administrators who will be having full control of all the sites or subsites under the SharePoint site collection.

And those SharePoint site collections will have responsible to activate site collection features, creating site columns and content types, site collection navigations, etc. In the SharePoint site collection settings page, you can see a dedicated section for Site Collection Administration activities.

If you will open the Site Settings page, then you can see a section for the SharePoint site collection administration.

https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/TSInfoClassic/_layouts/15/settings.aspx

You will not see this section, if you will go to the Site Settings page of any subsite in SharePoint.

If you are working on a Microsoft 365 group connected site, then by default the group owners will be added to the site admins or site collection administrator groups.

To check a SharePoint site collection administrator, go to the SharePoint site settings page and then click on Site collection administrators which is under Users and Permissions.

This will open the Site Collection Administrators page, where you can see the Site Collection Administrators, and also you can add or remove SharePoint site collection administrators.

To check the site collection administrator of an Office 365 group connected site, you can follow the below steps.

Open the Office 365 group connected site, then click on the gear icon -> Site permissions.

Then in the Permissions panel, click on Advanced permissions settings.

This will open the advanced permissions settings page, there from the ribbon click on Site Collection Administrators, which will open the Site Collections Administrators dialog box. There you can see by default the Site Owners group has been added to the Site Collection Administrators.

In an Office 365 group connected site, you will have only below three groups:

• Site Owners
• Site Members
• Site Visitors

So this is all about the SharePoint site collection administrators.

The SharePoint site owners are the owner of a particular SharePoint site.

SharePoint site collection administrators can do everything whatever a site owner can do with additional things.

How to find SharePoint site owner in Office 365

Now, let us check how to find SharePoint site owner in Office 365. We will see how to find SharePoint site owner in office 365 for the classic site as well as Office 365 group connected site.

Find Site Owner in Classic SharePoint Site

Open the SharePoint online site, click on the gear icon and then Site Settings.

In the SharePoint Site Settings page, click on Site Permissions which is under Users and Permissions.

This will open the Permissions page. Here you can see various SharePoint groups. You can see the Owners group in Site Name + Owners format, like here TSInfoClassic Owners.

Once you click on the group, you can see the SharePoint site owners like below:

This is how we can find the SharePoint site owners in a SharePoint classic SharePoint site or in SharePoint 2013/2016/2019.

Find SharePoint site owner in Office 365 group connected site

Now, let us see how to find SharePoint site owners in Office 365 group connected site.

Open your office 365 group connected SharePoint Online site, then click on the Gear or Settings icon. Then click on Site permissions.

This will open the Permissions panel. There you can see below 3 SharePoint permission groups like below:

• Site owners
• Site members
• Site visitors

Once you expand the Site owners, you can see the Site Owners. By default, the Office 365 owners group will be added to the Site owners group. Individually, you can also add users to the Site owners group.

This is how we can find SharePoint site owner in Office 365.

Add owner to SharePoint site office 365 or SharePoint online change site owners

Now, let us see how to add owner to SharePoint site in Office 365 and how to change SharePoint online site owners in Office 365.

We can add or change site owner from the SharePoint Online site as well as from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Classic SharePoint Online Site

Step-1: Open the SharePoint Online classic site, click on the Settings icon -> Site Settings.

Step-2: In the Site Settings page, click on Site permissions that is under Users and Permissions.

Step-3: In the next page, click on the <Site Name> Owners (TSInfoClassic Owners) group.

Step-4: Here click on New -> Add Users.

Then enter the user name and then click on Share.

Then the user will be added to the SharePoint Online classic site like below:

Similarly, if you want to remove a user from the SharePoint Online site.

Select the particular user and then click on Actions -> Remove Users from Group like below:

This is how we can change SharePoint site owner.

Office 365 Group Connected Site

Now, we will see how to add or remove SharePoint site owner in Office 365 group connected site.

Open your Office 365 group connected site, then click on the gear icon, then click on Site permissions.

Then in the Permissions panel, click on Invite people -> Add members to group like below:

Then you can click on Add members to add new members. Or you can even select a particular user and then select Owner like below:

Even you can click on Remove from group to remove the user from the group.

Similarly, if you want to remove SharePoint site owner, then from the Permissions panel, select the user and then click on Remove like below:

This is how we can remove SharePoint site owners from the owners list.

Here if you will click on Invite people -> Share site only

Then the user will not be added to the Microsoft 365 group rather, only the SharePoint site will be shared. Or the user will have access to the SharePoint site only.

Microsoft 365 Admin Center

Now, let us see how to add or change SharePoint site owner from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

In an Office 365 group connected SharePoint Online site, when you add a user to the Office 365 owners group, the user will be automatically added to the SharePoint Online site owner group.

Navigate to https://admin.microsoft.com and then click on Groups -> Active groups and there you can find the Office 365 group associated with the SharePoint Online site. Click on the group name.

On this page, you can see the owners and members of this Office 365 group. Then click on Members -> View all and manage owners.

Then click on + Add owners and then add any user. Then the user will be added to the Office 365 group member’s list.

Once, the user will be added to the Office 365 group, automatically the user will be added to the SharePoint site owner group.

Change SharePoint site admins from SharePoint Admin Center

Now, let us see how to change SharePoint site admins from SharePoint admin center.

Open SharePoint Online admin center.

https://<tsinfo>-admin.sharepoint.com/ Instead of tsinfo, you can provide your own tenant id.

Then click on Sites -> Active sites.

This will display all the active SharePoint site sites, select a site for which you want to change permission or add/remove the site owner.

Then go to the Permissions tab, then you can see Site admins, Site owners, Site members and Site visitors.

Here click on Manage to add or remove site admins or additional admins in the SharePoint Online site.

SharePoint site owner vs member

Now let us see the difference between SharePoint site owners vs members.

As I said before SharePoint site owners have full control on the particular site whereas SharePoint site members will have edit permission to the SharePoint site. So site members can create lists, libraries, add or remove files, add or edit list items, etc.

In the case of an Office 365 group or Microsoft 365 group connected site, then the group members will be automatically added to the SharePoint site members.

You can also use the above approach to add site members directly into a SharePoint site.

Get SharePoint site owner using PowerShell

I have created a video tutorial on how to get SharePoint site owner using PowerShell. You can check below:

Now, let us see how to get SharePoint Online site owner by using PowerShell or SharePoint Online management shell.

The below PowerShell script you can use to get all the SharePoint sites with owners.

Connect-SPOService -url https://tsinfo-admin.sharepoint.com/ -Credential (Get-Credential)

Get-SPOSite -Limit All

Below is the PowerShell script to get SharePoint site owners using PowerShell of a SharePoint classic site.

Connect-SPOService -url https://tsinfo-admin.sharepoint.com/ -Credential (Get-Credential)

Get-SPOSite https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/TSInfoClassic | Select Owner

Once you run the script, you can see the output like below:

Now we will see how to get the SharePoint Online site owners from Office 365 group connected sites using PowerShell.

To get users from Office 365 group, we need to connect to Azure active directory from PowerShell.

To connect to Azure using PowerShell, we need to first run the below PowerShell command.

Install-Module -Name AzureAD

Then run the below command to get the site owners.

Connect-AzureAD

$site=Get-SPOSite https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/training

Get-AzureADGroupOwner -ObjectId $Site.GroupID | Select -ExpandProperty UserPrincipalName

You can also write the below PowerShell script that will check if the site is an Office 365 group connected site or not. If it is an Office 365 group connected site, then it will connect to Azure AD else it will directly return the SharePoint site owner.

$site=Get-SPOSite https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/TSInfoClassic

If($site.Template -like 'GROUP*')
{
Connect-AzureAD
Get-AzureADGroupOwner -ObjectId $Site.GroupID | Select -ExpandProperty UserPrincipalName
}
else
{
$site.Owner
}

This is how we can get SharePoint Online site owner using PowerShell.

Change SharePoint site owner PowerShell

Now, we will see how to change SharePoint site owner using PowerShell.

Microsoft provides Set-SPOSite to change SharePoint Online site owner using SharePoint management shell.

$newsiteowner="bhawana@tsinfo.onmicrosoft.com"

Connect-SPOService -url https://tsinfo-admin.sharepoint.com/ -Credential (Get-Credential)

Set-SPOSite -Identity https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/HR -Owner $SiteOwner -NoWait

Once you run the above PowerShell script, the SharePoint site owner will be changed.

Change SharePoint site owner using PnP PowerShell

We can also use PnP PowerShell to change a SharePoint site URL.

Below is the PnP PowerShell script you can use to change the SharePoint site owner.

Connect-PnPOnline –Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/HR/ –Credentials (Get-Credential)

or 

Connect-PnPOnline –Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/HR/ -UseWebLogin

$newsiteowner="bhawana@tsinfo.onmicrosoft.com"
$site = Get-PnPTenantSite -Url "https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/HR/"
$site.Owner = $SiteOwner
$site.Update()

Once you execute the PowerShell script, it will change the SharePoint site owner.

But if you want to add additional site collection owners to a SharePoint site, you can execute the below command.

$newsiteowner="bhawana@tsinfo.onmicrosoft.com"

Connect-PnPOnline –Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/HR/ -UseWebLogin

Set-PnPTenantSite -Url https://tsinfo.sharepoint.com/sites/HR/ -Owners $newsiteowner

If you want to add multiple site collection owners to a SharePoint site, you can execute the below command.

$newsiteowner1="bhawana@tsinfo.onmicrosoft.com"

$newsiteowner2="bijay@tsinfo.onmicrosoft.com"

Set-PnPTenantSite -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/sales -Owners @($newsiteowner1, $newsiteowner2)

How to Change SharePoint Site Owner (All Sites) using PowerShell

We can easily change the SharePoint site owner for all sites excluding the personal sites by using the below command.

Connect-SPOService -url https://tsinfo-admin.sharepoint.com/ -Credential (Get-Credential)

$allSiteCollections=Get-SPOSite -Limit ALL -includepersonalsite $False

$newsiteowner="bhawana@tsinfo.onmicrosoft.com"

ForEach($site in $allSiteCollections)
{
   Set-SPOSite -Identity $site.url -Owner $newsiteowner
}

You can execute the PowerShell script using PowerShell ISE.

SharePoint Online site owner training

If you are looking for SharePoint site owner training, check out my SharePoint online site owner training course which is of more than 20+ hours of the video course (7 modules) and you can access lifetime.

I hope this SharePoint tutorial helps us to learn about SharePoint site owner and below things:

• SharePoint Site Owner
• SharePoint site owner roles and responsibilities
• SharePoint Site Owner vs Site Collection Administrator
• How to find SharePoint site owner in Office 365
• Find Site Owner in Classic SharePoint Site
• Find SharePoint site owner in Office 365 group connected site
• Add owner to SharePoint site office 365 or SharePoint online change site owners
• Classic SharePoint Online Site
• Office 365 Group Connected Site
• Microsoft 365 Admin Center
• SharePoint site owner vs member
• Get SharePoint site owner using PowerShell
• SharePoint Online site owner training
• Change SharePoint site owner PowerShell
• Change SharePoint site owner using PnP PowerShell
• How to Change SharePoint Site Owner (All Sites) using PowerShell