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This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-07-06. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Reinstating a former member of your organization

You can add former members to your organization, and choose whether to restore the person's former role, access permissions, forks, and settings.

Who can use this feature

Organization owners can reinstate a former member of an organization.

About member reinstatement

If a user is removed from your organization in one of the following ways, the user's access privileges and settings are saved for three months.

You can restore the user's privileges if you add them back to the organization within that time frame.

Items that are restored for reinstated members

When you reinstate a former organization member, the following items can be restored:

  • The user's role in the organization
  • Any private forks of repositories owned by the organization
  • Membership in the organization's teams
  • Previous access and permissions for the organization's repositories
  • Stars for organization repositories
  • Issue assignments in the organization
  • Repository subscriptions (notification settings for watching, not watching, or ignoring a repository's activity)

Reinstating a former member of your organization on GitHub

If an organization member was removed from the organization because they did not use two-factor authentication and your organization still requires members to use 2FA, the former member must enable two-factor authentication before you can reinstate their membership.

  1. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

    Screenshot of the dropdown menu under @octocat's profile picture. "Your organizations" is outlined in dark orange.

  2. Click the name of your organization.

  3. Under your organization name, click People.

    Screenshot of the horizontal navigation bar for an organization. A tab, labeled with a person icon and "People," is outlined in dark orange.

  4. Click Add member.

  5. Type the username of the person you want to reinstate and click Invite.

  6. Select whether to restore that person's previous privileges in the organization or clear their previous privileges and set new access permissions, then click Add and reinstate or Add and start fresh.

  7. If you cleared the previous privileges for a former organization member, choose a role for the user, and optionally add them to some teams, then click Add member.

Further reading