How to Restore Deactivated Users

Symptoms

A user that has been deactivated in the past cannot be brought back to life. Even if assigned to the right groups with confluence access.

Cause

In older versions of Confluence users have been deactivated by inserting a row into table os_propertyentry with entity_id = theUserId AND entity_key=confluence.user.deactivated
This entry is still evaluated but there is no mechanism in newer version to remove this from the DB.

Resolution

1. Backup Confluence
2. Stop Confluence
3. Find the user id (=theUserId) of the particular user in table users
4. Run the following SQL query to identify the row that contains the 'deactivated' information. The entity_name column should have an entry like 'LOC_username':

   select *  from OS_PROPERTYENTRY WHERE entity_id = theUserId AND entity_key="confluence.user.deactivated";

5. Delete this row from the table
6. Restart Confluence.

Additional Information