How to Merge Users

If a learner has accidentally created two accounts on your site, you can merge both accounts into one.

Applies to:

• User role: Site Owner, Site Admin, and team members with a custom role that has the delete users permission

How Merging Users Works

If one person has ended up with two accounts on your site — for example, they signed up with a different email address or through a different sign-in method — you can merge the two accounts into one.

When you merge, you choose which account to keep. The kept account gains the other account's enrollments and progress, certificates, groups, communities and more. The other account's profile details, password, two-factor setup and API tokens are removed, and its email address becomes an alias of the account you keep. The account that is not kept stays on your Users list as a read-only record with the status "Merged"; it is not deleted.

A merge can't be undone. Check which account you are keeping before you confirm.

Important Considerations

• Only Site Owner, Site Admins, and team members with a custom role with delete users permission can merge.
• Learners can't merge their own accounts. 
• A merge combines two users on the same Thinkific site. You can't merge users across sites.
• Only two users can be merged.
• Merges are permanent and irreversible.
• A merged account can't be merged again. The account you kept can be merged with a third account if needed.
• Information held outside Thinkific is not carried over, and connected tools aren't updated by the merge: SCORM and xAPI statements already sent to a learning record storage, Accredible credentials, Salesforce / HubSpot / Infusionsoft contacts, Stripe or Thinkific Payments customer records, Mixpanel profiles, Zoom identities, and information to other integrations. However, a merge event is sent, and integrations that listen for it may update on their own.

Which Users Can Be Merged

A pair of users can be merged only if all of the conditions below are true. If any of the below conditions are not satisfied, you will see a reason in the Merge users dialog window and suggested troubleshooting steps.

• Both users must be active. If a user is deactivated, reactivate a deactivated user first. Merged or erased users can't be merged.
• Neither user has an assigned user role. Remove the role first.
• The user who would NOT be kept has no active subscriptions, phased subscriptions, or active payment plans. This applies to subscriptions that are still processing an invoice. Cancel them first or wait until it ends. An active subscriptions, phased subscriptions, or active payment plans
• The two users don't both have saved payment details. The merge can keep only one payment profile/details and cannot merge two payment details, therefore merge is refused.
• The two users aren't signed in through the same single sign-on identity (e.g. the same Google account or the same identity using SSO). The identity can belong only to one user, therefore merge is refused.

How to Merge Users

1. From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
2. Select All Users
3. Find two users you want to merge and select checkboxes next to their names
4. Choose Merge from the bulk actions.
5. Review information about merging users, then select Choose account to keep
6. Pick one of the two accounts to keep: the two accounts are shown side by side with a Keep or Deleted label; a summary shows what moves from one account to another
7. Select Review merge
8. On the confirmation step, check which account you're keeping and what is removed, type MERGE in the confirmation box
9. Select Merge accounts. 

A merge normally takes seconds. While it runs, neither user can sign in.

What Happens When Accounts Are Merged

What Happens to the Account you Keep

• The kept account has the combined data and keeps its own email and password.
• The kept account's page lists the accounts merged into it, with the old email and date. This merge history is kept for 90 days, after which it is removed.
• The old email is an alias of the kept account. Searching for it finds the kept account. It can't be used to sign in or to create a new account, including through SSO. If the learner would rather sign in with the old address, an admin can change the kept account's email to it.
• Both email addresses receive an email about the merge.

Here is what moves to the account you keep:

• Course enrollments, lesson progress, quiz and survey results, submissions and certificates (certificates are never dropped; they move to the kept enrollment)
• Product access, bundles and program enrollments
• Group memberships
• Group order seats
• Community memberships, posts, reactions, follows and discussion questions and answers
• Single sign-on and social sign-in methods (Google, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• The other account's email address, which becomes an alias of the kept account (so searching for it finds the kept account). Aliases from earlier merges move too.
• Billing and tax details, if the kept account doesn't already have any

What happens when the accounts have the same:

• Course in both accounts: one enrollment is kept. The merge picks it in this order: a completed one, then the one with higher progress, then the one with an earlier activation (start) date; if still tied, the account you keep wins. Certificates from the removed enrollment move to the kept one.
• Expiry: a merge never shortens access. The kept enrollment takes the longer of the two expiry dates (no expiry beats any date). The same longest-expiry rule applies to all products.
• Profile and custom fields: nothing is copied from the other account. The account you keep keeps its own name, email, password, profile and custom profile fields, even where the other account has different values.
• Groups and communities: memberships from both accounts are combined.
• Sign-in methods: if both accounts use the same single sign-on identity, the merge is blocked.

What Happens to the Merged Account

• The merged account shows the Merged status on the Users list. 
• Its page is read-only: it shows when the merge ran, who ran it, and a link to the account it was merged into. It can't be signed into, edited, deleted or reactivated.
• Unredeemed gifts sent to the old address stay as they are; redeeming one finds the kept account through the alias.
• They no longer show up in the Learners tab of the Course Manager or Progress Reports (although their information is still visible in Cohort reports section of the Progress Reports for historical purposes).
• Both email addresses receive an email about the merge.

Permanently removed from the other (merged) account:

• Profile details, password, two-factor sign-in information
• API tokens and OAuth app authorizations
• Its ability to sign in, as a separate account

Stays as history on the other (merged) account:

• Orders, invoices and receipts stay on the account that created them. Find that account in All users with the Merged filter.
• Historical activity in the Activity Feed

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Articles

• Related: User Table: User Report and Filters
• Alternative: How to Delete a User
• Alternative: How to Deactivate and Reactivate Users