Deleting Users

Disabled users are not deleted from the database because existing issues may refer to those users. If you don’t want to see disabled users in the Contact, Owner, and Submitter fields:

    Delete the user from the users database.

    Remove disabled users from the Contact, Owner, and Submitter choice lists.

However, if an existing issue references the user in its Owner, Submitter, or Contact field, the field will be empty. In some cases, this may cause an invalid use of null error.

If existing issues reference disabled users, it may be impractical to delete the user accounts for ex-employees or contractors, because you want to keep a historical record of who reported, submitted, and resolved issues. In that case, you can add a prefix to the names of disabled accounts.

Before you delete users or remove them from the choice lists, check if they are referenced by existing issues.

To check if a user is referenced by existing issues:

1    Open the users database, and open the tblUser table.

2    Find the record for the user you want to delete, and get the value in the User ID field.

For example, if you want to delete the demo user, the User ID is 2.

3    Open the issue database for the project.

4    Open tblDts and look for the user ID in the columns of choice list fields that use tblUser. For example, nUserID (Owner), nOriginatorID (Contact), and nSubmitterID (Submitter)

To sort the table by user ID:

a    Click in the nUserID, nOriginatorID, or nSubmitterID column.

b    In the Record menu, click Sort then click Sort Ascending or Sort Descending.

c    Scroll through the records to see if the user owns any records.

Note that the revision history (the tblDts_History table in the issue database) also references users. And while unlikely, queries, summary reports, time reports, and notifications may also reference specific users. The definitions of queries, reports, and notifications are in the project definitions database.

If existing issues do reference the user, you can always reassign open issues, but closed issues can be a problem. You may want to keep a historical record of who reported, submitted, and resolved an issue. If so, you have to keep the disabled users.

Related Topics

About the Databases

Editing Databases

Removing Disabled Users from Choice Lists

Adding a Choice List of Users or Contacts