What Happens When a User Is Deleted

Deleting a user removes the account permanently. There is no trash and no undo. What the person owns or created, such as assets, collections, share links, access rules and templates, is not deleted: it moves to a new owner that you choose, private items included. Only the person's own data goes with the account.

When the person has left but their account may be needed again, deactivate it instead. Deactivation stops all access at once and keeps everything in place.

Page Overview

• Purpose: To explain the consequences of deleting a user account before you do it.
• When to use it: Read it when someone leaves the organization, when you clean up old accounts, or when a person asks for their account to be removed.
• What you will learn:
  • The difference between deactivating, a self-service account deletion and an administrator deletion.
  • Which content is transferred, kept, removed or able to block the deletion.
  • What the Delete User dialog shows before you confirm.

Deactivate, self-delete or delete

Action	Who does it	What happens to the account	What happens to the content
Deactivate	An administrator, from the user's Actions menu, or automatically on the account's expiry date	The status becomes Inactive. The person is signed out on their next request, and their API and MCP tokens stop working.	Nothing changes.
Delete my account	The person themselves, from their profile settings	The status becomes Deleted and the person is signed out everywhere. The account stays in the user list.	Nothing changes.
Delete	An administrator, from the user's Actions menu or with Delete Selected	The account is removed permanently.	Shared content moves to the new owner, and personal data is removed.

An account with the Inactive or Deleted status can be reactivated by an administrator. An account removed with Delete cannot be restored.

What the Delete User dialog shows

When you choose Delete, the dialog first checks what the person owns, then shows one of two things:

• Nothing to transfer: a confirmation. Click Delete to remove the account.
• Content to transfer: the number of assets, collections, shares, access rules and other items the person owns, and a Transfer content to field. Delete stays disabled until you pick a new owner.

What is transferred to the new owner

The new owner must be another active user. Everything below moves to them, including assets in the trash:

• Assets the person owns. The assets, their files, versions, metadata and history are kept; the owner shown is the new owner.
• Collections the person created, private ones included: the new owner can then see and manage them. Sub-collections created by other people stay with their creators.
• Assets the person added to any collection: they stay in those collections.
• Share links and internal shares the person created. Links already sent keep working.
• Asset access rules the person created or last edited. The rules keep applying exactly as before.
• Watermarks, renditions, attachments (private ones included), import sources, portal pages, page blocks, page versions and themes the person created.
• Invitations the person sent. Pending invitations stay valid.
• Rules, automation rules, filename parsing rules and export naming rules the person created or last edited.
• Templates, template sets and generated templates.
• Rights policies and the rights assignments the person made.

What is kept without the person's name

These records stay in place, without the person's name:

• Comments the person wrote, shown as written by Deleted user. Replies from other people are kept.
• Page workflow history and internal share history.
• Settings change history, API request history and rights usage history. These are never put under the new owner's name.
• Asset versions, asset requests, metadata definitions, dashboards and the other records where the person appears only as the author of a change.

What is removed with the account

Only data that belongs to the person alone is removed:

• Saved searches, bookmarks, collection subscriptions and the personal arrangement of collections.
• Personal settings, language preferences and consents.
• Assistant conversations, chat sessions and Studio sessions.
• Upload batches and their progress records (the uploaded assets are kept and transferred).
• Webhook endpoints the person registered, and their API operations.
• Group memberships and role assignments.

What blocks the deletion

Nothing the person created blocks the deletion: it is transferred or kept without their name.

Your own account and the platform support account are always skipped.

Complete Workflows

Workflow: Offboarding a person who leaves the organization

• Goal: Stop a person's access and keep everything they created available to the team.
• Prerequisites: The Manage users permission.

Steps:

1. Open Users, find the person and click the Actions (three dots) menu.
2. Select Deactivate.

• Expected result: The person is signed out and can no longer sign in, and their API and MCP tokens stop working. Collections, shares, rules and comments stay available.

Workflow: Deleting an account permanently

• Goal: Remove an account and its personal data, and give what the person created to a colleague.
• Prerequisites: The Manage users permission and a colleague to receive the person's content.

Steps:

1. Open Users, find the person and click the Actions (three dots) menu.
2. Select Delete.
3. Read what the dialog lists.
4. If the dialog lists content to transfer, type the new owner's name in Transfer content to and select them in the results. Pick someone who may see the person's private collections and attachments.
5. Click Delete.

• Expected result: The account is removed. The new owner now owns the transferred content, and the person's own data is gone.
• If it doesn't work: The message names the reason. The new owner must be another active user means you picked an inactive account or the person themselves.

Who can use it

Action	Permission needed
Deactivate or delete a user	Manage users
Delete my own account	Any signed-in user, from their profile settings

You cannot delete or deactivate your own account from the Users page. Platform support accounts cannot be deleted.

Tips and Best Practices

• Prefer deactivation when in doubt: Deactivation is reversible and keeps the account's history attached to its name.
• Transfer to a long-lived owner: Choose a team lead or a team account as the new owner, so that content does not need to be transferred again.
• Check share links with the new owner: Share links keep working, but questions from recipients now go to the new owner.

Related pages

• Users
• User Groups
• Roles
• Trash