A co-moderator, vwcnot, encountered an issue when trying to change a user’s primary email address, receiving the error “The address is already in use by a staged user.” pfaffman advised to search for the email address in /admin/users, delete the staged user, and let the user change their own address. However, vwcnot found only one email address associated with the user and was unsure if deleting the user would solve the issue.
pfaffman suggested merging the two users instead, as deleting a staged user might not be necessary. After finding the staged user, vwcnot asked about the outcome of merging the users’ posts and the possibility of deleting the staged user after merging, considering the 60-day post deletion limit.
pfaffman provided a link to the Merging User Accounts page, which answered vwcnot’s questions, resolving the issue.
I have taken over a co-moderator of a Discourse forum. A user wishes me to change their primary email. When I enter the new email address and click on the ‘Change’ button I get the following error message:
“There was an error changing your email address. The address is already in use by a staged user.”
I would be grateful for any help in what I need to do to troubleshoot/solve this issue.
Search for the address in /admin/users, delete the staged user, and then tell the user that they can change their own address.
Thank you for the response. A search for the email address, only shows 1 email, that for the user themselves.
Do you mean that I have to delete the user entirely? If so, will they have create a new account? And what happens to all their existing posts.
Apologies in advance: I am new to the use of Discourse.
If the NEW address belongs to the user, then they’ve already changed the address. If the new and old addresses belong to different users then you could also merge the two users. Usually staged users don’t matter, which is why I thought deleting it might make sense, but merging is probably a better idea.
Thank you for the reply. I havd not noticed that there is a ‘Staged’ tab, and the person is user there too.
If I merge the two together, what happens to the posts for both users, are the merged together?
And hopefully the last question: once merged can I delete the Staged user if there are posts more than 60 days old (based on ‘Users can’t be deleted if they have posts. Delete all posts before trying to delete a user. (Posts older than 60 days old can’t be deleted.’)?
Hopefully Merging user accounts answers your questions. 
Jay,
Thank you very much for your help. The page does answer the questions.
Victor