cant stop confluence watcher

Question

A user moved to another department and although she has removed herself as a watcher and set her profile email settings with Autowatch turned off, she is still receiving emails whenever her old department makes changes to their pages.  The space and the pages she's receiving emails from lists her as a watcher on the right side of who can't be deleted.

How can we stop her as a watcher?  I did a screen share with her and confirmed that when she chooses "watch" none of the boxes are checked for her.  But as admin, if I select "watch" "Manage users" I see her as a watcher on the right side.

Rob Woodgate · Answer

Hi Alicia,

As a space admin (and reading between the lines, if you made yourself a space admin then presumably you're a Confluence admin as well) you should always see the trash can icon.  However, you can't, so that means one of the following:

* The user is no longer active;
* Confluence needs to be reindexed because it hasn't caught up with the changes yet;
* The Confluence Watcher Button plugin is out of sync
* You've discovered a bug.

If the user is no longer active, try making them active again and seeing if you can delete them from the Manage Watchers panel.

If you're hosting your own Confluence instance then:

* The instructions for re-indexing are here (re-indexing is one of those "turn it off and turn it on again" solutions that often seems to solve page and email notification problems, amongst other things). 
* Try disabling and re-enabling the Confluence Watcher Button, which is the name of the plugin that deals with watchers and watching.
* If that fails you can clear the plugins cache to deal with out of sync or corrupted plugins.

If you're on Cloud (or none of that works on your self-hosted instance) you'll need to put a support ticket in.

Alicia Pena3 · Answer

Hi Rob,

Yes, there is no garbage icon next to her name.  I've added myself as admin to the space as well as a page that is sending her messages.  When I select manage watchers her name only shows up on the right side where there are no garbage can icons next to those names.  But I have confirmed that no boxes are checked when she chooses the watcher link for those same pages.

Alicia

Rob Woodgate · Answer

Hi Alicia,

A space admin can add or remove watchers from the space or any pages within that space.  However, you will only be able to do this for spaces where you are an admin.  When you click the Manage Watchers option on a page, the garbage can icon be used to remove her as a watcher.  Is the garbage can icon missing?