Cannot add a user that is supposedly deactivated but does not yet exist

Question

I would like to add user, but I get an error message saying:

'We were unable to send any invites because one or more accounts you have invited are deactivated. Remove these accounts from your invite and try again.'

The user I am trying to add is not deactivated; he is a new guy that I am trying to give an account for the very first time.

Any ideas?

Lobke Mertens_7bv2s7 · Answer

Thanks for your reply!

This user has in fact never been part of our organisation, so he does not exist at all (in my user maintenance).

What we suspect is that another organisation had him as a user before, since he is a consultant and had a client with JIRA before.

We resolved it now by creating another e-mail address with auto-forward, since we could not find a solution and he had to start working on things. :)

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

This happens when you have created a user with the same email details as someone who used to have an account that you've now deactivated or deleted.  (Goes without saying you should never reuse an email address for different people)

Go to the user maintenance part of your site and search for the user it is complaining about by email address, that should list them so you can re-activate them.

But the most common way to get this is that the user may actually have not been activated too.  It is possible to create what I call "stub accounts" (I'm sure there is a better phrase).  If you invite an email address, or include it in a cc on a request or issue, then, if Jira does not find a user with that email address, it will keep a record of the attempt to use the email for an account, offering them up in the known users list, with options to re-send invites and so-on.

I suspect that might be what has happened here - maybe someone cc'd them into something, and then, later, you've come along to invite them.