# Kan een beheerder een staged gebruiker aanmaken?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [16 september 2025 om 15:55 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844 "2025-09-16T15:55:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 15:55 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/1 "2025-09-16T15:55:53Z")
I asked this in [another thread](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-a-staged-user-with-an-api-call/84667/28), but it’s last post before mine was 5 years ago, so maybe it won’t get as much attention as a new topic.
I have a question from a non-devleoper’s perspective.
I’m using Discourse as our company’s ticket system and I have it set up successfully to create new topics from non-registered users in our support forum.
Occasionally, I need to create a ticket on behalf of a customer instead of them creating it directly.
Is there an easy step by step way to do this and create a topic on behalf of someone that does not already have an account on the forum? I don’t want them to have a full account unless they sign up for one themselves.
If it has to be done from a command line interface, that’s fine, but I need some hand holding such as:
1. Enter container with `foo`
2. Type `rails bar etc etc`
3. Whatever else needs to be done
I’m aware that I can reassign posts so if it’s too complicated to do everything, just the instructions to create the user, then using the GUI to change owner would be very helpful.
As long as I can write a detailed help desk article for the rest of the staff to follow I don’t care what it entails. Would be awesome not to have to have all staff needing access to the container via ssh, but we’ll make due if that’s unavoidable.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 16:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/2 "2025-09-16T16:30:40Z")
Do you have an email from the customer? if so you can forward it to Discourse and it will create a staged user for them.
There’s a little on this behavior here in the “forwarded emails behavior” I think you’d want to change the relevant setting to “create replies”
> [@Configuring incoming email to create new topics or group messages](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configuring-incoming-email-to-create-new-topics-or-group-messages/62977#p-290076-forwarded-emails-behavior-7):
>
> bookmark This guide explains how to set up incoming emails to create new topics or group messages in Discourse, including configuration of site settings and category or group-specific settings. person_raising_hand Required user level: Administrator This guide covers: Enabling and configuring incoming emails Choosing between category and group for incoming emails Setting up incoming emails for a group Setting up incoming emails for a category Deciding how forwarded emails are handled …
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 18:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/3 "2025-09-16T18:00:17Z")
> [@awesomerobot](#):
>
> Do you have an email from the customer? if so you can forward it to Discourse and it will create a staged user for them.
Not generally a direct e-mail. Most of the time it’s my boss forwarding me an e-mail from the customer and asking me to turn it into a ticket in order to reply to them.
I’m guessing all that would do is create the topic using my boss’s e-mail as the user ~~assigned to~~ who created the ticket.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 18:09 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/4 "2025-09-16T18:09:45Z")
Je kunt ook een voorlopige gebruiker aanmaken door hen simpelweg een PM te sturen en het e-mailadres als ontvanger te plakken. Als ze nog geen lid zijn, krijgen ze een voorlopig gebruikersaccount. Als ze later inloggen met hetzelfde e-mailadres, zal hun account op magische wijze transformeren en zien ze hun PM’s op de site.
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 18:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/5 "2025-09-16T18:30:15Z")
Dit is waarschijnlijk het antwoord dat ik zocht. Ik laat het weten zodra ik de kans krijg om het uit te proberen.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 18:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/6 "2025-09-16T18:36:18Z")
Nog een leuke truc, als je een groep gebruikt om de afhandeling van tickets met een team te delen, is om die groep op te nemen wanneer je de PM verstuurt. Op die manier wordt deze vanuit de groep verzonden en komen eventuele antwoorden ook terug naar de groep.
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 18:43 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/7 "2025-09-16T18:43:23Z")
Goed om te weten, maar ik heb het ticketsysteem zo ingesteld dat alles binnen Discourse blijft.
Het werkt tot nu toe erg goed, behalve bij één klant die hun eigen ticketsysteem gebruikt om ondersteuningsverzoeken naar ons te sturen. Zodra ik meer duidelijkheid heb over het probleem, kan ik een ander onderwerp starten om hen te helpen.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 18:48 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/8 "2025-09-16T18:48:05Z")
Oh wacht, ik weet niet zeker waarom ik “google group” schreef - ik heb mijn bericht gecorrigeerd. :facepalm: Ik bedoelde natuurlijk een _Discourse_ groep.
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [16 september 2025 om 18:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/9 "2025-09-16T18:49:15Z")
Dat is logischer, maar we gebruiken eigenlijk geen groepen. We gebruiken alleen accounts en onderwerpen om tickets bij te houden.
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [26 januari 2026 om 16:50 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/10 "2026-01-26T16:50:50Z")
> [@tobiaseigen](#):
>
> You can also create a staged user by simply sending them a PM, and pasting in the email address as the recipient. If they are not a member already then they will have a staged user account. If they log in later using the same email address, their account will transform magically and they will see their PMs on the site.
This used to work for us. I just had to use it again and now I get a pop up message that says:
`An error occurred: You must select a valid user.`
Any idea how to get this working again?
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [27 januari 2026 om 15:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/11 "2026-01-27T15:51:29Z")
Are you an admin or moderator, or in a group that is specified in the `Send email messages allowed groups` site setting? If not, then that error makes sense.
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [27 januari 2026 om 16:22 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/12 "2026-01-27T16:22:44Z")
> [@tobiaseigen](#):
>
> `Send email messages allowed groups` site setting? If not, then that error makes sense.
I think then you see a different error
This error seems to be caused by another check that checks for a username, group, or email address entered into the recipient field
>
@tknospdr what exactly did you enter into the recipient field? Was there anything special about that e-mail address?
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [27 januari 2026 om 16:40 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/13 "2026-01-27T16:40:19Z")
I am logged in as the site admin when this error occurs.
I’m using a plus address to test with but the error first occurred when I tried to create a new user as I have done in the past and got the same result.
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [27 januari 2026 om 17:01 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/14 "2026-01-27T17:01:46Z")
Sending PMs as an email definitely works for me. I don’t understand why it doesn’t work for you. Maybe it would help if you recorded an example? You can enter something like `discourse@example.com` so you don’t need to share an email address.
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [27 januari 2026 om 19:21 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/15 "2026-01-27T19:21:30Z")
Well that’s SO odd. I just tried with [example@example.com](mailto:example@example.com) and it worked.
So it doesn’t work with “+” addresses, and I suppose there could have been something odd about the original client’s address that sparked this issue in the first place.
We’ve already gone the long way around to get them into the system so I’m not sure what was up.
Thanks again for the help, even though it turns out to be a non-issue!
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [28 januari 2026 om 06:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/16 "2026-01-28T06:24:13Z")
Is `Normalize emails` enabled on your site, perchance?
> Check if normalized email is unique. Normalized email removes all dots from the username and everything between + and @ symbols.
When I enable that setting, the error message when I use an email address with + character, I get is this:
> An error occurred: One of the users you are sending this message to could not be found.
When I disable the setting, the PM is created and the staged user is created and gets the email.
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### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [28 januari 2026 om 14:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/17 "2026-01-28T14:15:53Z")
Yes, normalized emails was checked, it turned it off and now I can create staged users with plus addressing.
After further testing that only allows me to create plus addresses when there’s already another user (me for instance) using the normalized version of the address.
Even with it checked I could do a random plus address IE `test+this@thing.com` was created, but `david+test@example.com` wasn’t created since `david@example.com` already existed.
I guess that’s as expected.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [28 januari 2026 om 15:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-an-admin-create-a-staged-user/382844/18 "2026-01-28T15:49:02Z")
> [@tknospdr](#):
>
> After further testing that only allows me to create plus addresses when there’s already another user (me for instance) using the normalized version of the address.
I’ve never noticed that but if it’s intentional then that is indeed very clever! That is kind of the point of it.. to allow you to use one email address to create a bunch of test user accounts.