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Deleting a User account

Users can be deleted from a GitLab instance, either by:

  • The user themselves.
  • An administrator.

NOTE: Note: Deleting a user will delete all projects in that user namespace.

As a user

As a user, you can delete your own account by:

  1. Clicking on your avatar.
  2. Navigating to Settings > Account.
  3. Selecting Delete account.

As an administrator

As an administrator, you can delete a user account by:

  1. Navigating to Admin Area > Overview > Users.
  2. Selecting a user.
  3. Under the Account tab, clicking:
    • Delete user to delete only the user but maintaining their associated records.
    • Delete user and contributions to delete the user and their associated records.

Associated Records

  • Introduced for issues in GitLab 9.0.
  • Introduced for merge requests, award emoji, notes, and abuse reports in GitLab 9.1.
  • Hard deletion from abuse reports and spam logs was introduced in GitLab 9.1, and from the API in GitLab 9.3.

When a user account is deleted, not all associated records are deleted with it. Here's a list of things that will not be deleted:

  • Issues that the user created.
  • Merge requests that the user created.
  • Notes that the user created.
  • Abuse reports that the user reported.
  • Award emoji that the user created.

Instead of being deleted, these records will be moved to a system-wide user with the username "Ghost User", whose sole purpose is to act as a container for such records. Any commits made by a deleted user will still display the username of the original user.

When a user is deleted from an abuse report or spam log, these associated records are not ghosted and will be removed, along with any groups the user is a sole owner of. Administrators can also request this behavior when deleting users from the API or the Admin Area.