As a Jira admin how can I delete a team lead account?

[Guadalupe Salazar-Brown]

The team lead of a few of our projects left our organization. I need to remove him as a user (so that the license is freed for a new associate) but as he was the team lead the system doesn't let me delete his account. Any ideas on how to proceed?

Also, what is it best to do with people who left: delete them as users or close their accounts?

Thank you for any input.

[Max Foerster - K15t · Accepted solution]

Hi Guadalupe,

in general, you should deactivate users and not delete them for multiple reasons (even Atlassian is recommending deactivation instead of deletion):

• You preserve the history of the user's activity in Jira (and can easily activate the user again later)
• It's not possible to delete a user if you're using external user management
• It's complicated to delete a user because the user can't be deleted as long as he is
  - the reporter or assignee of issues
  - has commented on issues
  - is a project or component lead

If you just remove a user as any component or project lead you will be able to deactivate the user.

Best, Max 

[Guadalupe Salazar-Brown]

Thank you for your answer!

[Randy · Accepted solution]

Mark the account as inactive.  Inactive accounts do not count towards your license seats.

[Guadalupe Salazar-Brown]

Thank you!