Deleting end users

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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
• Deleting an end user
• Deleting end users in bulk
• Permanently deleting an end user

Considerations for end-user deletion

Make sure you understand the following before you delete end users from your account:

• 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.

Important: Deleted end users can’t be restored.

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.

To delete an end user

1. 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.
2. In the user's profile, click the user options arrow in the upper right, then select Delete.

   

3. 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

1. 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.

2. (Optional) Click the Suspended Users list if you want to delete only suspended users.

   

3. 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.

   

4. At the bottom of the list, click Delete.
5. 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

1. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Deleted users > Deleted users.
2. Click the user you want to delete permanently from the list.

   A screen appears with the user's name and their associated tickets.

3. Click Delete User.