Atlassian Jira cloud Why can't I search for reporter that's a disabled user

[Jennifer Bader]

Is there already a feature ticket in for this?  Seems like something that I should be able to control in the search filter, if I want to search for enabled users only or not.

I frequently NEED to be able to search for issues created previously by users that are CURRENTLY disabled.  Why wouldn't this be allowed?  Why don't I have a say within my filter?

Are there any recommended workarounds?  I want to search for ALL tickets created by a user but they are newly disabled, so their name no longer appears when I use the Reporter field in the search filter.

[Ajay _view26_]

Hi @Jennifer Bader 

The Reporter picker in the UI's Basic search filters out deactivated users by default, which makes sense in some contexts but really falls short when you need historical data.

Good news is there are a couple of solid workarounds using JQL (Advanced search):

Option 1 — Search by email or account ID directly. Switch to Advanced search and type the deactivated user's email right into the query:

reporter = "jane.doe@yourcompany.com"

If that doesn't work (some instances are picky about email vs. account ID), go to admin.atlassian.com → Directory → People, look up the disabled user, and grab their account ID from the URL (it'll look something like 712020:xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx). Then use:

reporter = "712020:xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

Both of these bypass the picker entirely and work regardless of whether the account is active or not.

Option 2 — Find ALL tickets from deactivated users at once. If you need a broader view, JQL has a handy function for this:

reporter in inactiveUsers()

This pulls up every ticket reported by any currently deactivated user across the project. Super useful if you're doing a cleanup or audit.

If you have specific disabled users you need to search for regularly, save these as individual filters so you don't have to dig up the account IDs each time.

And to your question about a feature ticket — yes, there is one. This is tracked as JRACLOUD-84848 ("Deactivated users can't be found through a Basic search"). It's currently in "Gathering Impact" status, which means Atlassian is evaluating how many people are affected before prioritizing a fix. I'd strongly recommend going to that ticket and hitting the Vote button