How to search for pages created by an inactive user?
Asked by Larry Peery:

Use Case: Employee A works at the Acme Company for 1 year and has spent much time documenting in Confluence. Employee A leaves Acme Company and is now an inactive user.

Employee B needs to reference all pages created by Employee A

While Employee A's name is retained on the pages created "**Created by ++Employee A++ (++Unlicensed++)**" if you click through to the profile no created pages are displayed.

When trying to search inactive users do not populate in the "Contributors" search field.

How can Employee B find this body of work?


Answers:
author: Shannon S
body: Hello Larry,

I came across your duplicate question of this, when I found this thread, and I discovered that you had also raised a support ticket.

In the support ticket, we let you know that this is a limitation of Confluence at the moment and there is a feature request for this below:

* [CONFCLOUD-41303](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-41303) *Allow searching for content contributed or created by disabled user*

**Workaround**

You can manually edit the URL for the search to work. For example, here's a search URL if I select my own user as the Contributor:

```
https://[redacted].atlassian.net/wiki/search?search_id=7c70cd94-0571-4f56-8b32-e96fd3f7c9f7&contributors=557058%3A4030fda2-XXXX-XXXX-b775-15973e041410
```

I go to [admin.atlassian.com](https://admin.atlassian.com), and I can compare the ID for my user plus the disabled one by right-clicking the username and copying the URL:

++Mine:++

```
https://admin.atlassian.com/s/62fe28c4-9ee9-4536-a9e4-01e3814164d0/users/557058:4030fda2-XXXX-XXXX-b775-15973e041410
```

++Disabled user:++

```
https://admin.atlassian.com/s/62fe28c4-9ee9-4536-a9e4-01e3814164d0/users/557057:b05d28ce-XXXX-XXXX-893d-1335811623e9
```

Therefore, I can then replace my ID with the one for the disabled user:
> https://\[redacted\].atlassian.net/wiki/search?search_id=449d0783-6938-43fd-8321-c29876fa4e9e\&contributors= **557057%3Ab05d28ce-XXXX-XXXX-893d-1335811623e9**

Can you give that a try and let me know how that goes for you?

Regards,

Shannon

comments: author: Larry Peery
body: Yes, that works as a work around that I as an admin can provide for people. The issue that I am faced with now is that I cannot expect a standard user to piece together a URL. I'm hoping that a solution is provided for [CONFCLOUD-41303](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-41303).

Thanks,  
Larry


author: Shannon S
body: Hi Larry,

Thank you for confirming. Yeah, it's a bit more complicated for end users, but I figured it would at least help you to get the data you need right now.

I included the workaround on the bug so hopefully it can help anyone else who might be struggling.

Take care, and have a pleasant rest of your week.

Regards,

Shannon


author: Habib Rahman
body: Hi Larry,

I think there is a way. I just updated the Jira story in comments.

This is how I was able to find.

Open the space, expand the 'Space contributors' list. There I could see all users who contributed, including deactivated users. Click on the names and it shows all (or most ) of the pages created by them.


author: James Dellow
body: Can I strongly suggest you raise this with Atlassian Support.

You could probably find them using a CQL search, if you can work out the the old user's account ID. But I suspect you won't be the first person to ask this and in the era of GDPR, an officially supported way of doing this would be useful. Or even a "transfer this deactivated users's pages to this user" function.

comments: author: Larry Peery
body: Thanks for the reply. I have opened an issue with Atlassian Support, JST-529615.

I was able to piece together a search using https:// *our instance* /wiki/dosearchsite.action?cql=contributor.accountId%3D%22 *userId* %22 but this is not something I can expect an end user to do.


Tags: confluence-cloud