Changing a User's Password

Owned by Luc Richard
Last updated: Feb 11, 2022
2 min read

From time to time, your users are likely to forget their password. When they do so, they can click on the "Forgotten your username or password?" link in the login form to reset their own password. That being said, you may still be required to update their password manually from time to time upon request.

Step-by-step Guide

To reset a user's password:

  1. Go to Site Administration > Users > Accounts > Browse list of users

  2. Find the user in question

  3. Click the cogwheel in the "Edit" column next to the user whose password you want to reset 

  4. Enter the new password in the "New password" field

    1. If the password field does not appear on the basic form, you can click on "Show advanced settings" at the bottom of the page to show more fields.

  5. (Optional) If you want to force the user to change his/her password next time they login, also check the "Force password change" checkbox immediately below the "New password" field

  6. Click on the "Update profile" button at the bottom of the page

Important Notes

  • If a user's password is managed using an external system such as Active Directory, you cannot reset their password via the learning environment. Their password needs to be reset via Active Directory. In this case, please follow your organization's standard procedure for updating passwords.

  • For security reasons, you cannot reset the password for someone whose security permissions are greater than yours.

Resetting Passwords in Bulk

It's also possible to use the "Bulk user actions" to have the system randomly generate passwords for multiple users at once and inform them of their new password via email.

To reset user passwords in bulk:

  1. Go to Site Administration > Users > Accounts > Bulk user actions

  2. Use the search filter to find the users in question and move them to the "Selected" box

  3. In the "With selected users..." pulldown menu, select "Reset password" and click on the "Go" button

The default email message can be viewed and/or modified via Language Customization. It's in the "local_dualcode.php" component and its string identifier is "newusernewpasswordtext". Note that the field does not accept HTML tags.



If you do not want the system to generate a random password and email it to users, you can also reset the password for multiple users using a CSV file. See "Uploading users" for more details.