# Bulk deleting / mass modifying users
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-deleting-mass-modifying-users/64362
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [June 12, 2017, 3:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-deleting-mass-modifying-users/64362 "2017-06-12T15:50:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@lead4good](https://meta.discourse.org/u/lead4good)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2017, 3:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-deleting-mass-modifying-users/64362/1 "2017-06-12T15:50:17Z")
Recently we’ve been migrating our bbpress forums to discourse at [purism](https://puri.sm/) (a company that builds security focused laptops by trying to free the hardware from binary blobs) . I’ve already wrote a tutorial on [how to import a bbpress backup](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-use-the-bbpress-import-script-or-any-other-import-script-with-mysql-dependency/63349) and now I will focus on another problem we’ve encountered.
After importing the backup we’ve discovered a substantial amount of users who haven’t posted into the forums yet. This was due to the bbpress import script importing all wordpress users. We had to find a way to delete them, and we were sure as hell not going to do that one at a time!
##How to bulk delete users or mass modify them in a specific way?
In this tutorial I will show how to bulk delete users which have not posted yet.
> **WARNING:** Please be very careful using this script and be sure to [backup your files](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-discourse-from-the-command-line/64364) before.
First open a command line on your discourse server and then open the file `delete_users.rb` in your favorite editor. Paste the following contents inside.
```plaintext
require_relative '../config/environment'
pm = 0
User.find_each do |u|
if u.post_count == 0 && u.topic_count == 0
puts "Deleting user #{u.id}, #{u.name}, #{u.username}, #{u.email} ..."
u.destroy
pm = pm +1
end
end
puts "Delete a total of #{pm} users"
```
This code loops through all existing users
```plaintext
User.find_each do |u|
```
Finds those who haven’t added a topic or post yet
```plaintext
if u.post_count == 0 && u.topic_count == 0
```
and deletes them
```plaintext
u.destroy
```
You can now copy the script inside your docker container `app`
```console
$ docker cp delete_users.rb app:/var/www/discourse/script/
```
Enter the discourse container `app`
```console
$ ./launcher enter app
```
And then execute the script
```console
$ su discourse -c "bundle exec ruby script/delete_users.rb"
```
If you want to delete your users based on different information or if you want to only modify them I would start searching in the User class at [app/models/user.rb](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/models/user.rb) in the discourse source code.
---
### Author:  [@jonathon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jonathon)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2018, 1:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-deleting-mass-modifying-users/64362/2 "2018-02-10T13:06:04Z")
A potentially more efficient way would be to select the users and delete as one transaction:
```ruby
User.joins(:user_stat).where("user_stats.post_count = 0 AND user_stats.topic_count = 0").destroy_all
```
See also:
> [@Bulk delete suspended users after import](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-delete-suspended-users-after-import/73011/3):
>
> For that, you should enter into the container with ./launcher enter app Then, you will need to launch the [rails console](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/command_line.html#rails-console) with rails c Once you’re in the rails console, you can delete all suspended users who have zero posts and topics with User.joins(:user\_stat).where("users.suspended\_at IS NOT NULL AND user\_stats.topic\_count = 0 AND user\_stats.post\_count = 0").destroy\_all Always make sure you have latest db backup whenever you run destroy\_all method.