Accounts in the NETID Active Directory (AD) that are considered inactive will be disabled and accounts that have been disabled for a year will be deleted.
Note the disabled and deleted states pertain only to use of accounts in NETID AD and UW Entra ID. Other uses of a UW NetID aren’t impacted.
Reactivate an account
Recommended option
To reactivate a disabled or deleted NETID AD account change the password.
If you have forgotten the password or need more information refer to About UW NetIDs.
After you have changed the password, there may be some latency for related capabilities:
- NETID Active Directory user account should return almost immediately
- Entra ID user account should return within 30m. NOTE: This is dependent on the Entra ID Connect synchronization process, which is highly dependent on how much needs to be synchronized. On busy days, it is not uncommon for this process to take several hours to complete.
- Office 365 licensing should return within 1 day (after the Entra ID user account is present)
Within 180 days since deletion
If it has been less than 180 days since the deletion, you can send a request to help@uw.edu asking for a deleted account to be reactivated.
This option is supported for very limited cases where an account’s unique security identifier (as opposed to a group membership) was used to grant access to a resource AND re-granting access to that resource is not possible. Whether we will reactivate a deleted account using this option is subject to analysis of the potential impact. Therefore, in almost every case, the recommended option (above) will provide more timely reactivation without the need for assistance.
More information
How accounts are sourced
NETID AD accounts are sourced from the UW NetID system. A disable or deletion made in the NETID AD has no impact on the corresponding UW NetID in the UW NetID system. A NETID AD user account is created or updated when a password is changed in the UW NetID system. This is why you can reactivate a NETID AD account by changing the password for the UW NetID.
Accounts in UW Entra ID and Office 365 are sourced from the NETID AD. Changes to NETID AD accounts are synchronized to Entra ID. A disable or deletion in the NETID AD will flow to Entra ID. Having an Office 365 license is one of the criteria for considering an account as active. This means that the NETID AD inactive account process will never disable or delete Entra ID accounts with current Office 365 licenses.
Deleted account reactivation
An inactive account in the disabled state retains its attributes including its unique security identifier (SID). When an account is deleted, its SID goes away. When a deleted account is reactivated by setting a password, a new SID is generated. Therefore, deleted account reactivation can impact access.
For example, if a deleted account had been granted access to a Windows resource directly via its SID, rather than as a member of a group, then that access would be lost if the AD account is deleted and reactivated. However, if access is granted via group, then access isn’t lost after reactivation.