Unable to delete user account

Have you tried deleting the account from Safe Mode?

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support

If this doesn't work you could try going to your Users folder in Finder and dragging the account to the Trash.

I'm having all of the same issues. I started by erasing my drive completely and clean installing 10.13 High Sierra. I created a single user. I then restored additional users from a backup using Migration Assistant and now I cannot delete the new user I created when initially reinstalling the OS. Using "dscl . -delete" gives the same eDSPermissionError error and using "sysadminctl -deleteUser" does remove the user's home folder and the other actions (BTMM was not enabled) but then errors with the same "Error:-14120 File:/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/Admin/Admin-670/DSRecord.m Line:563".

Booting into safe mode, enabling root and logging in from there then using System Preferences, dscl, or sysadminctl, using Directory Utility to delete the record, etc. all fail. I cannot delete this user. I can change the user's groups from the command line (removing it from the admin group) and I can change the user's UniqueID but none of this allows me to delete the user.

This is on a MacBook Pro (15-inch 2016 with Touch Bar) and I was having problems previously. Specifically, I had credit cards associated with this Mac using Apple Pay that I could not delete them and could not add any new ones (this problem showed up in Sierra and persisted on a clean install of High Sierra). I tried removing the cards using iCloud settings on the Mac, from iCloud.com and from the manage my Apple ID website but all said they were disabling the credit cards on the device, they always came back. I deleted the cards from all other devices linked to the same Apple ID but none of this worked. Now, even after the clean install (and before reinstalling any data through Migration Assistant), I still cannot remove the phantom credit cards nor add new ones.

I've owned over a dozen Macs since 1990 and this is my least favorite machine, by far, and I had a Performa 200!

If anyone has a solution to deleting the undeletable user or credit cards (Apple is "looking into it"), I'd be most appreciative. Thanks!

Just did another install, this time over the existing OS using the recovery partition, keeping all of my existing user data and upon logging into my main account, it asked for my Apple ID password and then setup Apple Pay before logging in. After logging in, I was able to add other cards. So it seems the credit card issue is now resolved. The failure to delete an existing user account remains, however. Since the user home folder has been removed, there's not much left of this user (again, I was able to remove it from the admin group so it's just a regular user account without a home folder) so I hid it:

sudo dscl . create /Users/USER_NAME IsHidden 1

The account is still there (and it's annoying because I used a short username I imagine I would like to re-use in the future) but for now, I will try to put this whole incident out of my mind... Still open to suggestions if anyone has some. Thanks.

I don’t think it’s the machine. It must be software-related. Happened to my MacBook Pro 15” 2011. Had to create another account when I sent it for repair after I spilled orange juice on the keyboard so that the guy repairing can have access to the computer without having to login to my account. After checking on my Mac, he decided that he couldn’t do it. He never did a thing. So I repaired it myself and it’s okay now. Problem is I can’t delete his user account.

Bought a new MacBook Pro with touch bar. So far, I’m loving it. But I don’t think I’m going to create another user account there. I have a feeling it can’t be deleted too.

Another thing I noticed is that after attempting to delete the extra user account, I can no longer login to it. It says wrong password. I left it blank. There’s no password.

I have the exact same problem.

We are used to create fresh OS installation with all the necessary software then duplicate them using Carbon Copy cloner.

If all of this works, using migration assistant to recover user account from broken High Sierra upgrade just brought this issue.

Unable to remove our admin user account. We've tried all the things suggested so far but no luck.

A real pain.

I have never seen such a behavior on older system (I have been using Mac since Mac OS 10.4).

I am wondering if it is linked to the OS security enforcement "SIP"

In Users & Groups did you unlock the lock at the bottom left and authenticate?

Do you have filevault enabled? Replace "Guest" below with the appropriate account name

From Terminal.app, copy and paste:

sudo fdesetup remove -user Guest

mezzetti wrote:

I wish I have FileVault enabled, I'm not able to enable that from any account.

I suspect this points to a bigger problem with your admin or permissions

My initial recovery was from a bootable drive mirrored from the original using SuperDuper! and not from a Time Machine backup. Still no luck but I appreciate the help.