User Name and User Email Conflict?

Question

I imported 500+ users into Drupal 7 by Feeds module. However, 1 of the user has 2 accounts. I got a error message "This name has already been taken by another user." when chaning their roles. Their username is different, but account A user name is same as account B email address. I think they have user name and user email conflict. Is it possible to fix this without changing username and user email?

User account A:
Username - usernameX
user email - [email protected]

User account B:
username - [email protected]
user email - [email protected]

Answer 1

I am puzzled by your description of the problem. Drupal 7 should not complain if A user name is the same as account B email address.

However, without making a too big deal of that, there is a way you can change an email address to avoid any conflict within Drupal, and still get mail delivered to that user without interruption.

Simply insert the character + and some string after the name part of the address, like this:

User account A:
Username   - usernameX
user email - [email protected]

User account B:
username   - [email protected]
user email - [email protected]

Drupal allows email-adresses with a + in them.

And for string comparison purposes:

[email protected] ≠ [email protected]

While for mail delivery purposes:

[email protected] = [email protected]

This technique, known “plus-addressing” allows users to sign up for different services with different aliases and then easily filter all e-mails from those services (provided their mail server doesn't strip it). Mail servers deals differently with “plus-addresses”. MS Exchange strips it, while Cyrus and GMail retains it - but AFAIK all mail servers deliver mail with “plus-addresses” to the intended recipient.