How can organizers delete user accounts?

Several users created accounts, uploaded submissions and registered for participation, but now we want to delete several user accounts. Is there anything we have to consider?

(A German version of this article is available.)

Please be informed that only administrators can delete user accounts, and that we usually only recommend deleting user accounts during or after the end of the testing phase. When the installation is already put into operation and publicly available, the deletion of user accounts is usually neither required nor recommended.

First please make sure that you really need to delete a user account. Maybe there are other sensible alternatives:

• If you want a user to register for participation again, please delete the registration for participation and ask the person to log in to his / her account to reregister for participation.
• If you want to remove a submission, please simply withdraw the submission.
• If a user has refused to be a reviewer, unassign the contributions currently assigned and then edit the user account to remove the reviewer status.
• If the user forgot his/her password, send him/her a new one.
• If users want to change their personal data, they can do so themselves, or organizers can make the changes in the backend on behalf of them. You can also block user accounts if you want to prevent the users from logging in again. This also disallows them to create another account with the same e-mail address.

Now, if you still want to delete a user account, please make sure that no other system data refers to it. In particular this means:

1.   The user must not be a submitting author. All submissions related to this user have to be withdrawn and purged before the user account can be deleted. More details on this topic are available at How to remove uploaded files. To purge (permanently delete) withdrawn submissions, please go to:
Overview =>Submissions & Reviews => Purge Withdrawn Submission
… and click on button "Yes, remove all withdrawn submissions from database now". This operation cannot be undone. Also, please note that all reviewers for those submissions have to be unassigned first.

2.   There must be no reviews assigned to the user. All reviews assigned to this user have to be unassigned or deleted first. To delete and unassign reviews (both for the users you want to delete as well as for the reviews assigned to the contributions submitted by those users) please go to:
Overview =>Submissions & Reviews =>Program Committee and Reviewers
… select the user by clicking on "Assign Reviews" and check the box "Unassign & Delete Review" (please consult entry How can I delete reviews?).

3.   The user must not be registered as participant. If the user is already registered, the registration for participation must be deleted before you can proceed. To cancel a user's registration for participation, please follow the instructions you can find in the forum entry Cancelling or deleting registrations for participation.

Now you can delete the user account using the action "Delete User".
More information on how to delete a user account can be found here: Editing/deleting users.

If the requirements described above are not met, an error message will appear (see image). Consequently, the user account will not be deleted.

Finally, if you also want to remove all deleted users from the database for good, you need to "purge" the user database. Please go to:
Overview =>User and Participant Management =>Purge Deleted Users
… and click on button "Yes, remove all deleted users from database now".
Please be informed that this operation cannot be undone.
Please see: Finally deleting users/mail addresses.