Agents and administrators can delete users. Administrators can also permanently delete users, which goes a step further in terms of removing a user from the system. You might sometimes need to permanently delete users because of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is an EU regulation. For more information, see Complying with the GDPR in the cross-product Help Center.
Understanding soft delete vs. permanent delete
This article describes two types of user deletion, and both types can be performed from the Support interface. Neither type of deletion can be undone. Here are some basic definitions to help you understand the difference:
-
delete (soft delete): deletes the user from the account, but does not permanently delete the user from the Zendesk database.
-
permanent delete: permanently deletes the user from the Zendesk database.
Since you cannot undo user deletion, be very careful when performing any type of user deletion and make sure you select the correct user. Zendesk cannot recover deleted users for you. This article describes deletion (or soft deletion) in the next section, and then permanent deletion in the last section.
Deleting users to remove them from your account
Deleting users from your account soft deletes them, and that means that the users are still in the Zendesk database and accessible on a limited basis only to Zendesk employees with certain database privileges.
Both agents and administrators can soft delete users in the agent interface in Zendesk Support. Agents with permission can delete end users, while administrators can delete all users except the account owner. Zendesk retains information about the account owner to continue providing its services. When the account is terminated, Zendesk follows its Data Deletion Policy to purge remaining profile data.
Agents must have permission to delete users and must have access to all tickets to delete users. On Team and Professional, permission to delete users is provided by default based on the Agent role and access to all tickets is set in their agent profile. On Enterprise, permission to delete users and access all tickets is set in the custom role.
You can't delete an end user or team member who's a requester on a ticket that hasn't been closed yet. See What is the difference between a Solved ticket and a Closed ticket? First, the ticket must be solved before it can be closed. Second, the solved ticket must be closed by a trigger or an automation. The ticket can't be closed directly in the agent interface. To close the ticket immediately, you can create a trigger for the specific purpose of closing the ticket. For details, see the tech note How can I manually close a ticket?.
If the deleted user was the requester or assignee on a closed ticket, you can still find the closed ticket by searching the ID. If you try to access the deleted user's profile from the ticket, you will receive an error.
No Help Center content is lost when you delete a user.
- Open the user's profile by doing one of the following:
-
In Support, click the
Customers icon (
) in the sidebar. Then locate the user and click their name.
- Click the user's profile name or picture from a ticket.
-
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. If you want to cancel the deletion, click Cancel instead.
- In Admin
Center, click the People icon
(
) in the sidebar, then select Bulk actions > Delete end users.
- (Optional)
On
the Bulk Delete page, change the
sorting
by clicking one of the column heads.
By default, users are sorted by their creation date, from most recent to oldest.
- Select
the checkbox for each user you want to
delete.
- Click Delete user(s).
- Click Delete again to confirm the user
deletion.
The selected users are deleted. This might take a few minutes.
If your organization must adhere to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the user wants to be forgotten, permanently delete the user as described in the next section.
Permanently deleting users
If your organization must adhere to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the user wants to be forgotten, after you delete personal data from all resources in Zendesk products, you must also permanently delete the user from Zendesk Support. Permanently deleting the user in Support also permanently deletes the user in Guide, Chat (for agents), Message, Talk, and Explore. The user is also permanently deleted from all product reports.
You should permanently delete a user only as the last step in the process of deleting all the user's personal data to comply with GDPR. The order of the tasks is important because you need the user's profile data to find their personal data in tickets and in other resources. If you permanently delete the user first, finding their personal data will be more difficult. For details, see Forgetting a user in Zendesk in the cross-product Help Center.
Deleting a user permanently is a two-step procedure:
- Soft delete the user (as described in Deleting users to remove them from your account).
- Permanently delete the user (as described below).
You can't permanently delete the user unless you soft delete them first.
Only administrators can permanently delete an end user or agent.
It may take some time for the system to permanently delete users depending on the amount of data currently queued for deletion.
To permanently delete an end user or agent
- Delete a user as described in the previous section.
- In Admin Center, click the
People icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Deleted users > Deleted users.
- Click
the user you want to permanently delete from the list.
A screen appears with the user's name and their associated tickets.
- Click Delete User.
16 Comments
If I delete an end-user, would all its closed tickets still being accessible to its organisation?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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?
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
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?
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
Looks like I couldn't able to see deleted user list in UI, NOT recoverable, Audit log also not there. Am I right?
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.
Are you able to find the deleted users tickets through a explore report ?
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!
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" ?
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