3 Ways to Remove Users from Asana

Managing Asana gets harder when old contractors linger, seats stay occupied, and sensitive work remains visible. You need a clean roster and clear access boundaries.

This guide shows three practical ways to remove people in Asana, at the project/team level, across a workspace or organization, and through the Admin Console for full deprovisioning. You’ll learn when to use each method, what access it changes, and how it affects billing.

Table of Contents

• Use Asana's UI
• Use Torii
• Use Asana's API

Use Asana’s UI

Here, you’ll use Asana’s UI to remove a user and clean up their access. These steps follow Asana’s help guidance for admins and team owners.

Start by checking your role

Only org admins can remove someone from the whole organization. Team admins or team members can remove someone from a team.

If you’re not an admin, ask one to do the org-level remove. You can still remove the person from your team.

Remove someone from a team only

Do this if the person just needs to leave one team, not the entire org.

• Open the team’s page in the sidebar.
• Click Members.
• Find the person, open the three-dot menu next to their name, and choose Remove from team.
• Repeat for any other teams they should leave.

Tip: Removing someone from a team does not remove them from the organization. They might still see projects where they are invited directly.

Remove someone from your organization (admin)

This fully deactivates the user in your org and revokes access.

• Click your profile photo in the top right, then choose Admin Console.
• Go to the Members tab.
• Search for the person.
• Open the menu next to their name and click Remove.
• When prompted, pick a teammate to receive their tasks and project ownership. Confirm the removal.

What Asana’s docs call out:

• Removing a member deactivates them in your org. They won’t be able to log in to your organization anymore.
• Their tasks and projects remain, and ownership moves to the person you choose.

Remove someone from a workspace (if you use a workspace)

If you’re working in a workspace, removal happens in workspace settings.

• Click your profile photo, then choose More, then View all settings.
• Open the Members tab.
• Find the person, click the menu by their name, and select Remove from workspace.
• Reassign their tasks when prompted.

Reassign tasks and hand off ownership

Asana will ask you who should take over the person’s work. Use this prompt to keep things moving.

• Choose a single active member as the new owner. Asana transfers task ownership and project ownership where needed.
• After removal, spot check a few key projects to confirm owners and due dates look right.

There are two things to review:

• Tasks assigned to the removed user that have near-term due dates
• Projects where the removed user was the only owner

Clean up any direct project invitations

If you only removed the person from a team, they could still have access to individual projects.

• Open important projects they worked on.
• Click Share to view project members.
• Remove the person if they still appear.

Confirm access is gone

Do a quick pass to make sure nothing was missed.

• In Admin Console, search for their name. They should show as removed or deactivated.
• In key projects and teams, confirm they no longer appear under Members.

Use Torii

Instead of operating directly in Asana, you can leverage Torii, a SaaS Management Platform, to remove user in Asana. SMPs centralize management of SaaS apps and subscriptions, enabling you to programmatically onboard/offboard users, access subscription and licensing details, and more.

With Torii, you can automate what would otherwise be a manual Asana step, so the task runs automatically whenever a defined condition is met. Triggers can include a new hire, an employee offboarding, a contract renewal, and similar events-saving time when this action repeats often.

To remove user in Asana straight from Torii, follow these steps:

1. Sign up for Torii

Contact Torii, and request your free two-week proof-of-concept.

2. Connect your Asana account to Torii

After your account is active, connect Asana to Torii (assuming you already have an account). Here are the instructions for the Asana integration.

3. Create a Torii workflow for Asana

In Torii, set up an automated workflow to remove user in Asana. Navigate to the Workflows tab, define your trigger, then add the action that removes the user in Asana. From then on, whenever the trigger is met, Asana will be updated automatically.

Use Asana’s API

Here, you’ll deprovision a user from a specific Asana workspace or organization using Asana’s REST API. This removes their access across that org, including its teams and projects, as described in Asana’s API docs for the workspaces.removeUser endpoint.

Prepare your auth header

You’ll need a valid OAuth access token or personal access token with admin rights on the target organization.

Example env var:

export ASANA_TOKEN="YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"

All requests include:

-H "Authorization: Bearer $ASANA_TOKEN"

Get the workspace GID

If you already know the workspace or organization GID, skip this.

Example curl is:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASANA_TOKEN" \
"https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/workspaces"

Scan the response for the correct workspace or organization and note its gid.

Get the user’s GID

If you know their email:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASANA_TOKEN" \
"https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/[email protected]"

If you prefer to list users in a workspace:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASANA_TOKEN" \
"https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/users?workspace=YOUR_WORKSPACE_GID&opt_fields=name,email"

Grab the user’s gid from the response.

(Optional) Confirm the user is a member of that workspace

This helps avoid removing from the wrong org.

Example curl is:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASANA_TOKEN" \
"https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/workspace_memberships?workspace=YOUR_WORKSPACE_GID&user=USER_GID"

If the data array is empty, the user is not a member of that workspace.

Remove the user from the workspace

Use the workspaces.removeUser endpoint. You must be an admin for the organization.

Example curl is:

curl -s -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $ASANA_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"data":{"user":"USER_GID"}}' \
"https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/workspaces/YOUR_WORKSPACE_GID/removeUser"

A successful call deprovisions the user from that organization. The API response typically returns a data wrapper with no object content.

Verify the removal

Query the workspace membership again. It should return an empty data array.

Example curl is:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASANA_TOKEN" \
"https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/workspace_memberships?workspace=YOUR_WORKSPACE_GID&user=USER_GID"

Handle common errors

• 400 Bad Request:
  • Check the JSON body format.
  • Make sure you passed a valid workspace_gid and user gid.
• 403 Forbidden:
  • Your token lacks admin permissions for that organization.
• 404 Not Found:
  • The workspace or user gid is wrong, or the user is not visible to your token.
• 409 or 412:
  • Retry after a brief delay. This can happen with rate limits or write contention.