Summary

If a user is recreated with the same user name after being deleted in the past, it cannot create a personal space due to a space key conflict.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a user
2. Log in as that user an create a personal space
3. Delete that user account, this is the message we see in the UI
   
4. Recreate the user with the same username as before
5. Log in with the user and try to create a personal space

Expected Results

Personal space is created as expected.

Actual Results

The space creation fails as the space key already exists:

Notes

This situation is happening on Confluence versions 6.13 and above and it is a result of some changes related to GDPR. As we can see in the quotes below, the personal space of a user is no longer deleted automatically when the user itself is deleted:

Deleting a user account does not remove any pages, comments, or other Confluence content. We also don't delete their personal space, as this may contain content owned by your organization.

This means that there will be some additional work to do after their account has been deleted to remove their personal space, and locate any references to the person in free text, or stored by third party apps or Synchrony in the database.

References:

• Confluence 6.13 Release Notes
• Personal spaces are not deleted

This is a big problem for organizations that need to manage large user bases and that constantly need to delete and re-add users. Also, the failure did not happen in versions earlier than 6.13 as the space was automatically deleted during the user removal process:

The main problem is that the personal space key remains the same (~<USERNAME>). This is why the key conflict is returned when trying to create a new space.

In newer versions, any content authored by the user has its ownership changed to its userkey when it is deleted. If the same concept is applied to the personal space key, this problem would be avoided.

Workaround

1. Manually delete the personal space before deleting the user, or
2. Disable the user instead of deleting it if that is a possibility