atlassian.com/questions/confluence
Asked by Joseph Pursel:

What are the steps to take to activate a deactivated user?

We are using Confluence 5.1.5.


Answers:
author: Alex Yasurek
body: Hi,

Do you have JIRA and Confluence connected? If so, are users being imported from JIRA into confluence? If they are then you can try enabling them in JIRA and see if that does anything. I feel like having to do database queries to enable a user is way to much work and there has to be a simpler solution.

comments: author: Joseph Pursel
body: AlexI do not know for sure if we have Confluence import from JIRA, but checking the user profile in JIRA shows that this individual is active, however she has not logged into JIRA. As you say, if our users are being imported from JIRA then she should be active. Let me know if this helps. Thank youJoe


author: Alex Yasurek
body: Hi,SO it seems what you need to find out is what system is controlling access for the this user. We at least know that it is not Confluence since it does not give you options in Confluence to enable/disable them. I am guessing then that it must be something with the LDAP or JIRA. I think you should probably escalate this issue with Atlassian and submit a support ticket about this. I don't have much experience using LDAP since my company doesn't use that for user management and I don't want to tell you the wrong thing. Let me know what they end up saying if you submit a request.


author: Alex Yasurek
body: Hi,

As long as you have Admin permission to Confluence you can just go to the Users section of the Admin area, search for the user, click on the users name and then you will see an option to activate the deactivated user.


author: Joseph Pursel
body: Alex:

\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*

I have more information and a question from our Database Architect. Below are his comments and his question,

I want to show you the query that we used to disable a user and then attempt to enable that user. The comments are from of our Database Architect.

The query used to Disable a user was:

update cwd_user  
set active = 'F'  
where active = 'T'  
AND  
id in (36971050)  

This immediately disabled me.  

However, when I re-enabled myself, by running:  

update cwd_user  
set active = 'T'  
where active = 'F'  
AND  
id in (36971050)  

It did not immediately let me in. The main user/search page does not show me as disabled, but the user details page does show me as disabled.

Do you have a better alternative on how to enable a disabled user?

\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*

Also,

I do have Admin permission as my user-id has both a confluence-administrator and a confluence-super group permissions. My Admin View User screen is below.

So, why do some of our users have only 3 options on the View User screen, as Elaine Heller has that are View Profile, Edit Groups and Edit Details, while some users have these 3 options plus 3 additional options that are Enable/Disable, Set Password and Remove, such as my id below?View User Screen with 6 options.JPG

Thank you

Joe  
[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/atlassian-com-questions-confluence/qaq-p/171220?attachment-id=12573){#link_1191eda1ebcd96}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/28575/1/View%20User%20Screen%20with%206%20options.JPG){#display_1191eda1ebcd96_0}


author: Joseph Pursel
body: Hi Alex,

Your response is what I expected to see when I accessed the users account as an Admin. What I see is when I view the user is shown in the figure below. I expected to see the Activate link at the bottom with the View and Edit options.

Let me know what I am missing.

Thanks

Joe

attached View User Screen - Unable to activate a deactivated user.JPG  
[](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/atlassian-com-questions-confluence/qaq-p/171220?attachment-id=10731){#link_1191eda7ef6aac}  
[](/tnckb94959/attachments/tnckb94959/confluence-questions/28572/1/View%20User%20Screen%20-%20Unable%20to%20activate%20a%20deactivated%20user.JPG){#display_1191eda7ef6aac_0}

comments: author: Alex Yasurek
body: Hi,I see the user is coming from LDAP. Are they enabled there? We don't use LDAP so I assume that is why I am able to see more settings there.


author: Joseph Pursel
body: From our investigation, we have determined that the problem is related to how JIRA works with LDAP because, we are allowed to disable and enable local users (external users from a NOAA perspective) via the JIRA user interface, but we are not allowed to disable and enable our LDAP users via the JIRA user interface.In addition we have checked our LDAP server and there is no problem with our LDAP server and, the user in question has not been removed from LDAP.Also we feel that there must be a trigger on the cwd_user.active field or some job that runs that changes something else based on the value of cwd_user.active field. From this, we need to know two things:1. Is there any way to re-enable a disabled LDAP user from the interface? And if not, when will there be?2. What query do we need to run on the database to manually re-enable a disabled LDAP user? Or is what I already did sufficient, but requires a JIRA restart.Thank youJoe


Tags: confluence-administration