Hi,

I've had an email from someone who wants to sign up to my forum, but can't as it says their email address has already been used.

They assure me they've never tried registering with us before.

The 2 problems are that they say they don't have a second email address to use, and also they are on AOL.


Is there really no search function in the admin panel to find a user my their email address? Because I can't find any one, and without the possibility I'm at a loss as to how I can help this person.

Any ideas appreciated. (Please don't tell me to tell the person they need to set up a new email address to register in my forum, as I understand this would be a last ditch idea, but I don't think it'll be well received my the person)!

Google and Yahoo both allow people to create email addresses for free.

Or, tell that person to register with a false email address, and then you can activate the account.

Then, once a member, they can revise their profile to reflect the proper email address.

There is no way you can search through all emails. You'd have to check them all, one by one, then.

Don't you have a second email? Perhaps you can set up the account and send a password to them. They can change their password/email then. On that way you won't have to use a fake email, like Edward suggested and you won't give them extra work (as in setting up a new email).

Yep. I just did that.

I created an account called Admin_test with the email address of abc@xyz.com

Obviously a fictitious email address.

Then, I could go in as the Admin and activate the account and replace the email address with something real if I needed to.

As Admin you could do the complete set-up of an active account for this person and simply supply them with a password and account name.

They could then alter the information after they've logged in.

Quite simple.