As the Admin or Co-Admin, you may need to delete a managed user, specifically, the managed user account, 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.
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.
If the managed user you delete owns content or workflows, you either transfer or delete their content and workflows when you delete the user. However, if your organization has Governance enabled with active or retired retention policies, the option to delete their content is not averrable and you must transfer their content.
Co-Admin Prerequisites
- To delete a managed user, a Co-Admin must have the Manage Users permission enabled.
- If content or workflows owned by the managed user are not deleted, they must be transferred to the Co-Admin unless the Co-Admin has the Edit users' content permission enabled, which would allow the Co-Admin to transfer the deleted managed user's content to any managed user.
To delete a managed user:
- Go to Admin Console > Users and Groups .
- Select the Managed Users tab.
- Click the user name.
- Click Delete User .
- If the user owns content in Box:
- Select either:
- Transfer content and workflows to another user, and then enter the name or email address of another managed user in your organization that the deleted user's content will be transferred to. Content left in the user's trash will also be transferred.
- Delete their content to delete the managed user's content and workflows. (This option is not available if your organization has Governance enabled or if the user owns only workflows.)
- Click Continue.
- Select either:
- Decide whether you want to notify the involved users. (You can choose to notify the deleted user at the email address in their managed user account, and also the user that content and workflows are being transferred to.)
- Click Delete User.
- If you use data residency zones and you are transferring content that will be moved to a different zone, click Continue in the Confirm Data Residency Migration dialog box.
Account Results
- Deleting a user's account does not change the number of paid seat licenses in your organization. For more information on adjusting the number of purchased licenses, see Decreasing Seats From Your Subscription.
- Once deleted from Box, the person's name is removed and replaced with Prior Collaborator or Anonymous User across the user interface. This includes:
- Uploader in File Properties
- Comments for File Activity
- Access Stats under File Details
- Tasks created by the deleted user are no longer displayed in the File Activity pane.
- User Activity for deleted user accounts remains reportable via the Admin Console report, under Reports
Content Transfer Results
If you transferred content:
- 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 .
- If you delete a user that only has workflows, then the workflows are transferred to you.
- 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, 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.
If you have any questions, submit a support case to our Product Support Team.
Known Issues
If a managed user has only workflows, the workflows are not properly transferred when you delete this user. Prior to deleting this user, follow the instructions here to transfer the workflows.