You can delete end users one at a time or in bulk from the Customers page in Support. Agents must have access to all tickets to delete end users. On Enterprise plans, this permission is set by an agent’s custom role. Only admins can delete end users in bulk.
When you delete end users, they’re soft deleted and queued for permanent deletion after 30 days.
Admins can permanently delete end users before 30 days. Permanently deleting end users ensures compliance with global data privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). For more information about GDPR, see Complying with privacy and data protection law and Forgetting a user in Zendesk.
This article covers the following topics:
Considerations for end-user deletion
- You can't delete these types of users:
- An end user who’s the requester on a ticket that isn’t closed.
- Placeholder users created during ticket sharing.
- Users created through legacy Chat.
- No help center content is lost when you delete an end user.
- Deleting end users from your account soft deletes them, which means the users are still in the Zendesk database for 30 days before they’re permanently deleted.
- Deleting an end user's account can’t be undone. Make sure you select the correct user when deleting end users.
Deleting an end user
Admins and agents with access to all tickets can delete an end user. Admins can also delete multiple end users at the same time.
Deleted end users appear on the Deleted users page for 30 days before they’re permanently deleted by an automated process.
You can’t delete an end user with tickets that aren’t closed. It’s recommended to locate the user’s unclosed tickets beforehand and edit the tickets to change the requester or create a trigger to close them.
- Open the user's profile by doing one of the following:
-
In Support, click the Customers icon
(
) in the sidebar. Locate the user and click their name.
- In a ticket, click the user's profile name or picture.
-
In Support, click the Customers icon
(
- In the user's profile, click the user options arrow in the upper right, then select
Delete.
- When prompted, click OK to confirm the deletion.
The end user is deleted.
If the end user has unclosed tickets, they aren’t deleted and an error appears.
Deleting end users in bulk
Admins can delete up to 100 end users at a time.
To delete users in bulk
-
In Support, click the
Customers icon (
) in the sidebar.
By default, users are sorted by their creation date, from most recent to oldest. Change the sort order by clicking a column header.
- (Optional) Click the Suspended Users list if you want to
delete only suspended users.
- Select the checkbox for each user you want to delete. You can
select users across multiple pages.
Alternatively, select an entire page of end users by clicking the check box at the top of the table.
- At the bottom of the list, click Delete.
- Click Delete customers in the dialog to confirm the
deletion.
- The selected users are deleted if they don’t have any unclosed tickets. This might take a few minutes.
- The selected users aren’t deleted if they have
tickets that aren’t closed. A message appears that
shows which users are requesters on unclosed
tickets.
Click a user’s name to view their unclosed tickets. You can edit the tickets to change the requester or create a trigger to close the tickets, then attempt to delete the end user again.
Permanently deleting an end user
After deleting a user, they’re queued for permanent deletion after 30 days. Admins can permanently delete end users before those 30 days if needed.
To permanently delete an end user
- In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Deleted users > Deleted users.
- Click the user you want to delete permanently from the list.
A screen appears with the user's name and their associated tickets.
- Click Delete User.
36 comments
Nemo
If I delete an end-user, would all its closed tickets still being accessible to its organisation?
3
Heather Rommel
Hi Nemo Zheng,
Yes all the closed tickets would be accessible by their org if you have ticket sharing ok for them. They would be able to see them in the portal under the tab for org tickets.
0
Tania
We followed the instructions to permanently delete a user, but the mentioned sidebar on the right-hand side is now offering bulk actions, rather than the expected "deleted users". Has something changed? Where can I action the permanent deletion now?
1
Cheeny Aban
Hi Tania,
Thank you for flagging the article! we appreciate it. The option is now bulk delete users. To permanently delete a user, you can go to Bulk Delete>Choose the user that you would like to delete>Delete - you will receive a prompt that the user will be deleted permanently.
1
Julien Maneyrol
Hi there,
Why has the "Deleted users" section disappears from the People page? Using the "Bulk delete users" page is not practical for us (no search engine) and we need to roam among our 1999+ user DB to find the users we wish to remove permanently.
1
Cheeny Aban
Hi Tania and Julien,
Good news! the settings to delete users have been moved to the Admin Center. Admin Center > People > Bulk actions. Separate pages for Import users, Import organizations, and Delete end users.
This feature is rolling out to accounts beginning on September 13, 2021 and should take about a week. During the adjustment period, you can see the settings in both Support and Admin Center. More information can be found here: About Support settings in Admin Center
1
Jacqui
Hi,
1 - Is our storage limit affect when we "soft delete" users, or only when we premanently delete users?
2 - Is there a way to bulk permanantly delete users? It looks as if we have to click into each individual user?
1
Michael Froeming
Hi Jacqui,
Only when users are permanently deleted.
There's currently no way to do it in bulk within the admin center, but you can use this API endpoint instead: https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/ticketing/users/users/#permanently-delete-user
Best,
Michael Froeming
0
Eckhard Doll
I don't understand why the API is needed to delete accounts permanently in People > Deleted users? Just like in the regular ticket views, add checkboxes to allow bulk deletion.
I have 6k of users that need to be deleted and Zendesk is offering to select an account one-by-one and to open it in a separate window to delete it? Really?
1
Michael Froeming
Hello Eckhard,
At this time, unfortunately there really is no way to permanently bulk delete users in the interface.
I've marked this conversation as product feedback for review, which means that your input will be aggregated as a part of our Voice of the Customer program that provides customer feedback to our product development teams.
In addition, I encourage you to create a new post in the Support Product Feedback topic in our community to engage with other users who have similar needs and discuss possible workarounds. Conversations with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning.
We truly value customer feedback and your voice and votes in the forums help influence future Zendesk functionality.
Best,
Michael Froeming | Senior Customer Advocacy Specialist
NEW - Zendesk offers free, on-demand training for all of our products. Set up your account and start learning today at training.zendesk.com
0
Anita Rajkumar
Looks like I couldn't able to see deleted user list in UI, NOT recoverable, Audit log also not there. Am I right?
0
Dave Dyson
0
Growthdot
Hi, if you are looking for rapid deletion of users' data, you can try the GDPR Compliance app for Zendesk. You can compile a target user or ticket list by setting up a specific condition and then select one of the bulk processes: delete or anonymize. Also, you can choose the type of data to process. Retrieving process is also available.
0
Emil Susort
Are you able to find the deleted users tickets through a explore report ?
0
Brett Bowser
You won't be able to delete tickets through Explore. This would need to be handled through the Support UI by an admin on the account.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
0
Emil Susort
Hi Brett,
Let me try to elaborate my question;
We would like to generate reports about a users tickets even after we have deleted the user.
i.e, the user is deleted, some time later we want to see the tickets to that user. Would we be able to create a query in Explore showing all tickets with filters "requester" is "Deleted user A" ?
0
Gab Guinto
The data related to soft-deleted users will remain in Explore reports. Only when you permanently delete the user from your Support instance will the data in Explore be removed. See Deleting users. If you haven't permanently deleted the users, then you should still see their names in your report filters, and you'll still be able to report on their tickets.
0
Ronja Sindek
Hi, when we delete a user, this user is called "permantly deleted user" in the community, can we rename this?
0
Gab Guinto
I'm afraid it's not possible to modify the displayed text 'Permanently deleted user'.
0
Tejas
a Permanently deleted user was rehired and now we have created a new account for the user.
Few of the contacts (recent) sent by these user shows as contact actioned by deleted user.
I haved checked the Zendesk ID, both users have a different ID, ( Deleted user shows old ID by same agent). Considering this cound be issue with browser cache, user had re-install the browser but no luck in getting this sorted.
Any idea what could be the issue here?
0
Neil
If the recent contact was via a closed ticket that had the same credentials of the deleted user, it may carry off the same message ID but it is highly unlikely that the deleted user will linked to a ticket that was sent from the new user profile.
-1
Samantha Son
Hello! Can you tell me where do find the Zendesk data retention policy for active customers please? Thanks
1
Madison Hoffman
Hi Samantha! Just to confirm, you're looking for Zendesk's policies on data retention our end users/customers? If so, I'd start here.
0
WeRoad
If i soft delete an end-user (customer, not staff), will they still be able to email me?
My use case is the following:
Some customers don't want to be contacted with promotions or general updates (we shouldn't send outbound emails) but still want to be able to contact us when they need help (we should be able to receive their messages).
We thought about deleting that end-user so they don't appear in the list of users (CSV) when we download it in order to run campaigns. Let me know if there's a better way fo doing this.
0
Christine Diego
Hi WeRoad,
Deleted end user can still reach out to you via email, or even on your help center, once they reach out again, a new profile will be created.
0
Tony Wacheski
Hi, Both Apple and Google now require all apps in their stores to provide the end user the ability delete their accounts/data as easily as they can create an account.
We are using the Zendesk API to create a support request in our apps which saves the users name and email in their profile.
How can an end user delete their own support account, to comply with this requirement?
0
Roberto L
I need to delete a couple of accounts of agents to try to see if that will fix an issue of them not queuing for calls. When I delete a user, I'm assuming all their ticket history will be associated with the deleted account? If so, can I link that ticket history to another account or a new account for the same person?
0
Gabriel Manlapig
Hi Roberto,
When you delete a user (agents or admins), all the closed tickets associated with it can still be accessible by searching the Ticket ID. However, you cannot reassign closed tickets, so the agent will remain the assignee of any closed tickets. As of the moment, Only open tickets – that is, tickets that aren't in the closed state – can be reassigned.
What we can recommend is to archive a list of the tickets of that specific user so that you will have access to all the Ticket IDs before deletion.
0
Radek Popovic
Hi, if I permanently delete the end-user, I can still see his name in the tickets that the user created. Is there any way how to remove the name from the tickets? Thanks!
0
Lisa N
Hello, I received the notice that bulk deleting end users is moving to agent workspace. Currently in admin, I can filter by only suspended users, but I don't see that option in the screenshot above. Will that be available?
0