unable to delete user

[Ruud Grosmann]

from time to time, I experience problems when trying to delete a user from jira.

Hopefully you can guide me on this. I have a user with id 'aem' that has left our company a year ago. When I click on 'delete user', I get an screen stating

This user cannot be deleted at this time because there are issues assigned to them, they have reported issues, or they are currently the lead of a project.

Please note that any components with this user set as the lead will have the component lead set to empty when the user is deleted.

In the following overview, the 'assigned issues' field has value 1, which is a link. If I click it, I get an information panel saying 'No matching issues found. '

When I search all issues with query "assignee = aem", I get 'no matching issues found' as feedback.

Any ideas what I can do to actually remove the user?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Generally, you do not delete users in Jira, you just remove them from all groups and roles, and make them inactive. That stops all usage, they won't be assignable any more, and they don't use up any licence seats.

However, you've got a mismatching data item here which is also worth checking, because it could be a system error. There are three things I can imagine throwing you into this state:

1. You cannot see the issue they are assigned to because you do not have permissions to see the project
2. You cannot see the issue they are assigned to because there is an issue security scheme preventing you from seeing it
3. Your index is damaged - the delete-user report is finding an issue assigned, but it's not being found when you go to the navigator

I'm afraid you need to dig to work out if 1 or 2 are occurring - check the permission schemes on all the projects. Although it might be worth starting with aem's roles and groups - check you can see the same as them to start with. For problem 3, you'll need to re-index Jira to correct it.

[Darrell Snow]

I have this problem as well. When I attempt to delete the user it says that the user has reported issues. The user can't find any issues they have reported, and when I log in as an admin and search for any issuses reported by this user I get not results.

I have reindexed twice and restarted the server once to find that JIRA still thinks this user has reported issues.

FYI - JIRA 6.0.1

Any other thoughts on deleting this user?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You have not mentioned the permission or security schemes. My guess, as you've reindexed, is that the issues are hidden from both of you for some reason.

Remember that "admin can do everything" is a bad usage model and it's quite easy to set up Jira so that issues don't appear to administrators by default.

[Ruud Grosmann]

Hi Nic,

maybe you are right. I have tried different things to find what could be reason not to be able to see the issues of that user. She did only participate in 3 projects and I cannot find anything unusual in the settings for those projects.

I am stuck. Hopefully next time this issue occurs again it gives me an opportunity to find the real reason for this.

thanks anyway for your help, Ruud

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Only thing I can think of is my last resort - reading with sql. Assuming your user logs in as bob:

Select * from jiraissue where reporter = bob ;

Select * from jiraissue where assignee = bob ;

Select * from jiraaction where author = bob ;

Those should find everything that Jira thinks is blocking the deletion of bob. Won't tell you why you can't find them though :-(

[Ruud Grosmann]

hi Nic,

that's an interesting idea. These queries are not understood by the select issues feature. Can you briefly explain where I can issue the sql queries?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Those queries are generic SQL, not JQL. You'd run them against your database server directly (and remember never to write to a Jira database while Jira is running! These are JUST for finding "bob")

[Ruud Grosmann]

Hi Nic,

found it. The queries you mentioned reported one issue and the jira administrator had no permissions to browse the project it was in.

Changed the permission scheme so that admin has permission to browse project and is able to locate the issues.