Ghost of deleted user profile is haunting me (shows up in search results and tags)

Question

When I joined my current company, a new user was created for me that had a random capitalized letter in the email address.

All attempts to fix the error were in vain, as there always remained some random place where the capitalization error showed up again.

In the end, IT decided the best solution was to just delete the user and start over (not a big deal as I was a new user).

So far, everything looked OK, until we noticed that in the Azure DevOps (TFS) the old user still showed up in search results, probably since it was not removed before the user was deleted.

As you can see, instead of an e-mail it shows the follwing:

OIDCONFLICT_UpnReuse_3f39b....

Is there a way to delete the old user permanently and prevent it from showing up? Currently people can tag the old user, which is a big nuisance.

I'm not the IT guy, but I hope to find a lead to help them solve this issue.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can delete the User permanently by using the below commands in Azure CLI

Note: the below mentioned command require admin access.

az devops user  remove --user 
                       --org 
                       --yes

The above mentioned CLI command will help you in removing user permanently from the Azure Devops organization.

Example:

1. After user put email address
2. in the link put your organization name

Parameters

user: User's email to be removed.

org: Organization name from which user should be removed.

Below command will help you in configuring default organization if you are not configured

az devops configure -d organization=ORG_URL.

Use the below command if the default organization is picked up from different path

git config.

yes: Don't prompt for confirmation.

you can Refer for further details.

Answer 2

Sign in with a member user from Azure AD into the Azure DevOps organization and go to or click on "Settings / Azure Active Directory"

At the top, you will see a banner with the following message

4 member(s) of the x-ops organization can't sign in because they're not in the XOPSX Azure Active Directory. Delete any unwanted users in Organization settings, and then Resolve for remaining members. with a Resolve button next to it

You will have to click on Resolve to map the "Current Email" with the "Matched Identity in Directory" to map the user with its identity and resolve this issue.