Are you struggling with transferring ownership of a Facebook page to a different business manager account? You’re not alone. If you search the web for advice, you’ll find thousands of Facebook users who are having problems with this seemingly simple request.

Transfer Ownership of Facebook Page: Facebook Help

There are two main articles in Facebook’s help that describe some of the requirements for transferring a Facebook page:

Making an Ownership Transfer Request for a Facebook Page

First, the new owner of the Facebook page needs to make an ownership request for the page that needs to be transferred. This can be done in Facebook Business Manager.

Approve a Facebook Page Ownership Request

To be able to approve the request, you need to be the page admin, both with your own Facebook account, and with the Facebook Business Manager that is currently owning the page. According to Facebook, there are two ways to approve a page ownership request:

Approve Facebook Page Ownership Request from the Page itself

  1. You open your page
  2. On the bottom of the navigation, you select “Settings”. Note: If you’re already using the new page experience, this link might be somewhere else
Facebook Page Settings
  1. Within the Page Settings, select “Page Roles”
  1. On the Page Roles page, scroll down to Ownership Requests and select “Respond to Request”.
  1. Confirm all the steps, enter your password and hopefully, you’re done.

Approve Facebook Page Ownership Request from Meta Business Manager

  1. Open your Business Manager
  2. Navigate to “Requests”
  1. You should find the request there – click on “Approve”.
  1. Confirm all the steps and hopefully, the page will be transferred.

Facebook Page Ownership Request: “Unable to approve Request”

Chances are high that you run into an unspecific error message at the end of the process:

Unable to approve request

This request could not be approved because of an error.

Facebook: Unable to approve Request: This request could not be approved because of an error.

We struggled for weeks to solve this error, and unfortunately it’s nearly impossible to get help from the Facebook support. However, eventually we looked into the source code to see if there was a more specific error message – and indeed there was! Here’s how to access it:

  1. To open the Developer Tools in your Browser, press F12 if you’re on Windows and Chrome. On a Mac, press the shortcut Option + ⌘ + C.
  2. In the top bar of the tools, click “Network”.
  3. Start the process of accepting the request again, so that your network activity is recorded.
  4. When you see the error message, select the “graphql/” object in the Network tab, and check its response:
  1. Check the text in the response field. For better legibility, you may paste it in a text editor (e.g. Word). It will contain a much more detailed error message. In our case, we had the following two errors and were able to transfer the page after resolving them (bold text added for emphasis):
{"data":{"approve_page_transfer_request":null},"errors":[{"message":"A server error field_exceptio
n occured. Check server logs for details.","severity":"CRITICAL","code":2361125,"api_error_code":-1,"summary":"Page Cannot Be Removed From Business","description":"Page is associated with a Commerce Account and cannot be moved. Please disable the Commerce Account first before trying again.","description_raw":"Page is associated with a Commerce Account and cannot be moved. Please disable the Commerce Account first before trying again.","is_silent":false,"is_transient":false,"requires_reauth":false,"allow_user_retry":false,"debug_info":null,"query_path":null,"fbtrace_id":"DSqygklTgl5","www_request_id":"AMvYh1RmBXBHSWRD4UXfTID","path":["approve_page_transfer_request"]}],"extensions":{"is_final":true}}
{"data":{"approve_page_transfer_request":null},"errors":[{"message":"A server error field_exception occured. Check server logs for details.","severity":"CRITICAL","code":1752069,"api_error_code":10,"summary":"Can't approve request to add Page to a Business Manager account","description":"As a security precaution, you aren't allowed to approve a request to add this Page to a Business Manager account because you were added as an admin on the Page less than a week ago (until September 14 at 4:47 PM).","description_raw":"As a security precaution, you aren't allowed to approve a request to add this Page to a Business Manager account because you were added as an admin on the Page less than a week ago (until September 14 at 4:47 PM).","is_silent":false,"is_transient":false,"requires_reauth":false,"allow_user_retry":false,"debug_info":null,"query_path":null,"fbtrace_id":"G4e1ZwHKVrz","www_request_id":"Ae5wyHmuSaaerxXjf3aW8L4","path":["approve_page_transfer_request"]}],"extensions":{"is_final":true}}

What next? Maybe book Sports Influencers on Sponsoo

We hope the trick with the source code helped you to resolve any problems! Now you can go back to doing fun stuff with your page. And if you happen to work with (sports) influencers as part of your business – do reach out to us! At Sponsoo, we have thousands of sports influencers from all over the globe in our database. Check them out here: Athletes on Sponsoo