# Merge Users borked?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/merge-users-borked/178529
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** merge-user
**Created:** [February 5, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/merge-users-borked/178529 "2021-02-05T09:56:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Paul\_King](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Paul_King)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/merge-users-borked/178529/1 "2021-02-05T09:56:25Z")
After successfully updating my discourse installation from beta 2.7 beta 2 to 2.7 beta 3 just now, I tried a ‘merge users’, for a user who has only made 270 odd posts between his two accounts.
45 minutes later, website is still greyed out and showing ‘Changing post ownership’ - I assume some process has hung somewhere?.
My forum had otherwise very little activity going on (no other logged in users)
On searching this forum for clues, I stumbled across a [post](https://meta.discourse.org/t/merge-users-plugin/114917) referring to the Merge Users plugin that ‘may be broken soon’ now that Discourse has included the functionality natively (as of Discourse 2.5.0 beta 3).
I still have that plugin (version 0.1) installed, though I did not as it happens initiate a merge from the plugins menu, but used a ‘Merge’ button found directly on the user’s profile page (bottom right). I am guessing this means I invoked the native Discourse tool rather than the plugin?
I am unsure whether the plugin or Discourse itself is to blame for the process stalling.
I can access the site as administrator using another browser session, and can see both profiles are still present, although all but 9 of the old posts being merged are now associated with the newer intended account. Beside that figure, I see a warning that may or may not be associated with this specific attempted merge process `'Can't delete all posts. Some posts are older than 60 days old. (The delete_user_max_post_age setting.)'`
As it happens ALL of the posts successfully merged were older than 60 days, so unsure what to make of this.
What do I do now to elegantly terminate the process (assuming it is still ongoing) and prevent database corruption?
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### Author:  [@Paul\_King](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Paul_King)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2021, 12:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/merge-users-borked/178529/2 "2021-02-05T12:26:35Z")
OK, I gave up and refreshed browser window that was greyed out, and the site resumed as if nothing had happened - showing the same old version user account with the 9 unmerged posts remaining.
I tried again, after setting delete\_user\_max\_post\_age to 99999 - same result. I then tried merging the other way - same result.
In the end I tried again using the plugin, and this worked perfectly first time, and took only a minute or two.
So, on the evidence at hand, the 2.7 beta 3 Discourse merge function is broken in some way, but the plugin still works.
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### Author:  [@ondrej](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ondrej)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2021, 12:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/merge-users-borked/178529/3 "2021-02-05T12:30:44Z")
> [@Paul\_King](#):
>
> Discourse merge function is broken in some way
I works fine when I try it. Maybe there was something going on because you had the plugin installed? On here it is categorised as a #plugin:broken-plugin. Glad you fixed it eventually.
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### Author:  [@Paul\_King](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Paul_King)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2021, 12:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/merge-users-borked/178529/4 "2021-02-05T12:36:32Z")
Thanks. I will uninstall the plugin, on the basis that if the situation is not improved next time for native merge process, I can always presumably reinstall it.
I wonder if the age or source of the posts being merged was a factor? These posts were all imported from a now defunct Yahoo Groups forum, and the import process created ‘zombie’ users where there was no corresponding active user for the given email address already. I think this old user account was an example of this.