How to inactivate a user that is the lead of some projects

[Jian Qin]

Hello,

I need to inactivate some users but the system doesn't allow the transaction since some of them were the lead of some projects. We don't want to change the lead to another user since we'd like to keep the history data.  Is there a way to make it happen? 

Thanks.

[Thomas B]

Hi @Jian Qin - there are similar threads posted below but long story short, either change the Project Lead (Project > Project Settings > Users and Roles > Edit defaults) or keep the user active. It is not possible to deactivate a user that is a project lead. There are many reasons that you cannot deactivate users that lead projects.

• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Answers-Developer-Questions/Deactivating-project-or-component-leads-in-JIRA-6-3-1/qaq-p/541163

[Jian Qin]

Thanks, then we will have to think about changing project lead.

[Pedro Zabala]

I am starting to struggle to understand this side of JIRA. We can not close projects in order to keep the project history apparently. However, because of that we need to change permissions to hide the project and change all leaders that we want to inactivate, or change actions/comments of users if we ever want to delete that user. 

So we need to change the whole project MANUALLY before we hide it in the background. This is a pain (and a complete waste of time) for administering projects and users. 

Please tell me that my understanding is wrong and help me to inactivate my user who is component lead on few old projects.