Not able to remove admin from Users on plan on bitbucket

[Rama Rudraraju]

Administrator that created our bitbucket workspace and account initially is leaving. We are trying to remove access for him in bitbucket. We navigated to "Workspace Settings" on Bitbucket and then to "Users on Plan". But, we are not able to remove the account. We click on Remove (X button) on "Users on Plan" but nothing happens, we continue to see their account. We see a message: "As an admin of this workspace, <User Name> has direct admin access to all repositories.". How do we remove this user ?

[Ben · Accepted solution]

Hey Rama,

Welcome to the Bitbucket Cloud Community! :) 

We are not able to resolve workspace ownership disputes when the request is made by a user who does not currently have ownership of the workspace, this is due to our security policies protecting user-generated content.

The workspace which you have specified is a personal workspace, this means that the workspace belongs to a singular user and therefore this user cannot be removed from the workspace unless the primary email address (used for login purposes) associated with the workspace is changed.

As a personal workspace is only tied to a single user and their associated Atlassian account, this will mean the new owner of the workspace must not already have an existing Bitbucket Cloud account - the email address associated with the Atlassian account will become the primary email address for the workspace.

Therefore, to resolve the issue:

1. You will first need to re-enable the user's email account (if it is disabled) or reset the password to gain access to the workspace by logging in using this email account.
2. Once you have gained access to the workspace, you must then create an Atlassian account (NOT a Bitbucket Cloud account):
   https://id.atlassian.com
3. Once the Atlassian account is created, you can then add this account as an email alias on the workspace: 
   https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/set-email-aliases/
4. Once the email alias has been added, let me know and I can change this to the primary email address and de-associate the previous user so that they may be removed from the workspace

Cheers!

- Ben (Bitbucket Cloud Support)