QuickSight Enterprise – Users stuck as "already exists or being deleted" after namespace deletion

Question & Answer
, , , , ,
1

Hi Team,

I am using QuickSight Enterprise Edition.

  • I deleted a namespace which contained multiple users (e.g., user1, user2, etc.).

  • After 1–2 days, I recreated the same namespace.

  • When I tried to log in with user1, QuickSight attempted to create the user but failed with:

    ResourceExistsException: User already exists

    and when I tried updating, it failed with:

    User already exists or is being deleted

  • After waiting 10–15 minutes, the user creation finally succeeded.

  • The same thing is happening for other users (user2, etc.) — I keep hitting the same error until some time passes.

My Questions:

  1. Does QuickSight retain user information after a namespace deletion?

  2. Is QuickSight starting the deletion process for old users only when I attempt to recreate them?

  3. Is anyone else facing this issue, and what is the recommended fix or best practice?

Edition: Enterprise

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi @rajshar and welcome to the QuickSight community!

While removing namespaces does trigger the removal of users and groups associated with that namespace, it is an asynchronous process; therefore it may take the system additional time to actually remove those users, like the instance you’re encountering.

So to my understanding, when a namespace is deleted; since the process is asynchronous, that the users will get deleted but it may take some time for the user deletion to process.

In terms of best practices, as there’s no API to move a user between namespaces, therefore the only other option would be to delete the user (separately from deleting the namespace) as that may trigger the action a bit quicker.

Alternatively, you could also create a support ticket to get more personalized assistance regarding your account and whether this might be a bug.