As the Administrator of your organization's Box instance, you can delete managed users. When you delete a managed user, if they own any content in Box, you also choose whether to transfer ownership of that content to another Box managed user or to delete that content. However, if you delete a user that only has workflows, then the workflows are transferred to you.
Note
This does not affect either existing collaborations (at the folder-level) or shared links, so users do not lose access to the content after the transfer completes.
You may need to delete a managed user in Box if they have left the company or no longer need access to your content. For more information about terminating employees, see Best Practices for Terminating Employees.
If your organization uses Box Relay, and the user you're deleting has also created workflows, you can transfer their workflows along with their content to another user.
If your enterprise has Governance enabled with an active retention policy, you cannot delete a user without transferring their content.
Tip
A less permanent action you can take is to lock a user out of Box and freeze their content by setting their Status to Inactive in their user profile. However, if you have already made a user inactive, you will see the same view as the user, which will indicate that the account is inactive. At that point, to access the user's content, use the Content Manager.
Note
You can also remove users via the Box API or CLI.
To delete a managed user:
- In the Admin Console, click Users and Groups.
- Select the Managed Users tab.
- Click the user name.
- Click the Delete this user link.
- If the user owns content in Box:
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- Select:
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- Transfer content and workflows to another user, and then enter the email addresses of one or more existing managed users. Note that content left in the user's Trash will also be transferred to the next user. Admin Tip: You can transfer everything to yourself and then apportion the content out to other users.
- Delete content.
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- Click Continue.
- Select:
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- If the user owns any Relay workflows:
-
- Select:
- Transfer content and workflows to another user, and then enter the email addresses of one or more existing managed users.
- Delete workflows.
- Click Continue.
- Select:
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- Decide whether to notify the user that the account is being deleted. If selected (default), an email message will be sent to the user's email address upon account deletion.
- Click Delete.
New design
To delete a managed user:
- In the Admin Console, click Users and Groups.
- Select the Managed Users tab.
- Click the user name.
- Click Delete User (
). - If the user owns content in Box:
- Enter the name or email address of another managed user in your enterprise that the deleted user's content will be transferred to. Note that content left in the user's Trash will also be transferred to the next user.
- Click Continue.
- Click Delete User.
Notes
- When the transfer completes, the deleted user's content displays in the recipient's root level under a folder titled "[Deleted User's Email] - [Deleted User's Name]'s Files and Folders."
- Files owned by the user are inaccessible while they are being transferred. This also means that during the move, any shared content owned by the user is inaccessible to all collaborators.
- Existing collaborations at the individual file-level are not transferred during the process. All existing collaborations at the folder-level are not affected.
- The process of transferring content can take some time to complete, depending on the amount of content your user owns. The more content they own, the longer it takes to complete. If after you start the process there is no error, but some of the content does not immediately display in the new location, please wait up to a day before you contact support. If the process does not complete, we suggest first trying to transfer some of the largest folders individually. To do this, follow these steps. If you continue to get an error, please file a support request.
- Box does not perform transfers as one single action. Instead, Box chunks a transfer into smaller pieces and then schedules each piece of work separately. As a result, portions of the folder tree display gradually at the destination, until the entire transfer completes. If a deleted user has a large amount of content to transfer, we recommend performing the transfer after business hours.
- A co-admin cannot delete another co-admin, nor can a co-admin create content within an Admin's account. From the system's perspective, transferring content to an Admin's account via the delete-and-transfer process is the same as creating content in their account. It causes an error.
- Deleting a user's account does not affect subscription costs. For more information on adjusting the number of purchased licenses, please review this article.
*If you have any questions, please submit a support case to our Product Support Team.