How to remove inactive users from watching issues?

[Jose M.]

Is there a way within the JIRA functionality to remove all inactive users from beeing watching issues? This should happen at once and done by the JIRA administration.

I can perform a bulk operation

Stop Watching Issues

Stop watching all the selected issues. You will no longer receive notifications when any of these issues are updated.

 but this will only affect the current user, even the JQL is looking for watchers in an inactive status.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Accepted solution]

JIRA will not send an email to inactive users even if they are in the watcher field. If you must remove them in bulk, you might have to do it in DB (I didn't know that bulk stop watching doesn't remove inactive users).

[Jose M.]

Thanks for the info. Just noticed, that JIRA sends email to inactive users when mentioned in an issue.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Looks like there is an open issue for it (https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-27992). It is slightly different but should address the problem.

[Jose M.]

Thanks for the hint. I have voted for it.