Will a disabled user still be taking up a license?

[John l]

I read another Q/A here which said that disabling a user should free their license so that a new user can be added. However after deleting a user who was already disabled I noticed that under "license details" the number of users under "signed up currently" went down by one. So it appears that even when disabled a user is still using a license. Is this correct?

Link to the other question thread:

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/25543/delete-wiki-user

[JohnA · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

A deactivated user shouldn't take up a license slot, as per our document on the subject: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Viewing+and+Editing+License+Details#ViewingandEditingLicenseDetails-UnderstandingtheusercountforyourConfluencelicense

It is possible that the user was still visible in an Active Directory or still had the Can Use permission somehow, but if not then you should open a ticket with Support so that we can investigate whether this is a bug or not.

All the best,
John

[John l]

I tried disabling a different user and this time it did free up a license like it should. I don't know if it was a glitch or human error but it seems to be working now. Thanks!

[AlysonA]

John,

Sometimes a change might not reflect immediately. If that happens again, simply go to Confluence Admin > Cache Statistics and flush it all. :)

[Alejandro Conde Carrillo]

Hi.

Actually, Confluence take into account for the license all users with "can use" permissions, whether they are enabled or not. To make an user not to count for your license just remove it from all groups with "can use".

There is actually a bug, CONF-24969, for the issue with disabling users.

[Septa Cahyadiputra]

Judging from the behavior description here:

I tried disabling a different user and this time it did free up a license like it should. I don't know if it was a glitch or human error but it seems to be working now. Thanks!

It seems that the users that still counted as a licensed users even if its duplicate have a duplicate in another directory which still have "Can-use" permission. This is actually a bug in Confluence which is describe here:

• CONF-25412

We provided a workaround in a published knowledge base article here:

• Disabling external user does not reduce licensed user count

Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Septa Cahyadiputra