Delete or restore a user

Updated: February 27, 2014

When a user no longer needs their cloud user account, such as when they leave the organization, you should delete the user account. Deleting the user account frees the cloud service licenses assigned to it and ensures that unauthorized persons do not continue to use the account.

When you delete a user account, the account becomes inactive. However, for approximately 30 days after you have deleted it, you can restore it. When you restore an account, you may encounter conflicts with user names or proxy addresses. You also must ensure that there are licenses available to assign to accounts before you restore them.

This topic explains how to delete a user account, how to restore a user account, and how to resolve conflicts when restoring accounts.

What do you want to do?

• Delete one or more users

• Restore one or more users

• Restore a user with a user name conflict

• Restore a user with a proxy address conflict

The following steps can be completed using either the Office 365 account portal, the Windows Intune account portal or the Windows Azure AD portal, depending on which services your organization has subscribed to. In this way, portals act as front-end interfaces that pull in directory data associated with your organizations Windows Azure AD tenant. For more information about using portals to manage your tenant, see Administering your Windows Azure AD tenant.

Delete one or more users

1. Depending on which portal you are using, in the left pane, click either Users or Users and Groups.

2. Depending on which portal you are using, select the check box next to the user or users that you want to delete, and then click either Delete or the icon.

3. In the confirmation dialog box, click Yes.

Restore one or more users

1. Depending on which portal you are using, in the left pane, click either Users or Users and Groups.

2. Depending on which portal you are using, click either Deleted or Deleted Users.

3. Select the check box next to the user or users that you want to restore, and then click either Restore or Restore users.

4. In the confirmation dialog box, click Yes.

Restore a user with a user name conflict

A user name conflict occurs when an administrator deletes a user account, creates a new user account with the same user name (either for the same user or another user with a similar name), and later tries to restore the deleted account.

To resolve a user name conflict, you can either replace the active user account with the one that you are restoring, or assign a different user name to the account that you are restoring so that there are not two accounts with the same user name.

To restore a user with a user name conflict, follow these steps.

1. Depending on which portal you are using, in the left pane, click either Users or Users and Groups.

2. Depending on which portal you are using, click either Deleted or Deleted Users

3. Select the check box next to the user or users that you want to restore, and then click either Restore or Restore users.

   Note

   If two or more users fail to be restored, an error message advises you that the restore operation failed for some users. You can view the log to see which users were not restored. You must restore the failed accounts one at a time.

4. On the User name conflict page, do one of the following:

   • If you want to keep both the restored account and the conflicting active account, click Change the user name of the user you want to restore, type a new user name, and then click the appropriate domain name.

   • If you want to remove the active account and replace it with the account that you are restoring, click Replace active user with this deleted user.

5. Click Submit.

6. Review the results, and then click Finish.

Restore a user with a proxy address conflict

A proxy address conflict occurs when an administrator deletes a user account that contains a proxy address, assigns the same proxy address to another account, and then tries to restore the deleted account.

To restore a user with a proxy address conflict, follow these steps.

1. Depending on which portal you are using, in the left pane, click either Users or Users and Groups.

2. Depending on which portal you are using, click either Deleted or Deleted Users

3. Select the check box next to the user or users that you want to restore, and then click either Restore or Restore users..

   Note

   If two or more users fail to be restored, an error message advises you that the restore operation failed for some users. You can view the log to see which users were not restored. You must restore the failed accounts one at a time.

4. On the Resolve proxy address conflict page, if you want to restore the user account and delete the proxy addresses attached to that account, click Submit.

   Note

   If a user account contains more than one error that prevents you from restoring it, the Resolve proxy address conflict page displays a Next button instead of a Submit button. Click Next to resolve the error on the next page.

5. Review the results, and then click Finish.

See Also

Concepts

Create or edit users