how to remove TFS workspace mapping for another user

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2010. Some months back I was using some 'ABC' TFS user to connect to TFS and mapped some folders on my local drive. Now my previous user 'ABC' is gone and I am allotted a new tfs user 'XYZ' to connect to TFS. So naturally I tried mapping some remote folder to my existing local folder and I got the following error.

"The working folder 'Some_Local_Path' is already in use by the workspace WORKSPACE_NAME:USER_NAME on computer 'MACHINE_NAME'"

I have tried removing the cache folder contents but the same error (C:\Users{UserName}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Team Foundation\3.0\Cache). I have also tried running the commonly found TFS command (tf workspaces /remove:*) to delete the caches for all worksapaces but still the same error. When I try to edit my workspace, it shows source control and local folders for my current user 'XYZ' but what I want is to remove the folder bindings for my previous user 'ABC'. How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

You need to get your TFS administrator to delete the workspace if you have no access to the account.

You may be able to do it by calling "tf workspace" with the explicit user specified, but you need "manage other users workspace" permission. TF Sidekicks uses the same commands so would require the same permission. It is a TFS admin productivity tool.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y901w7se(v=vs.100).aspx

You can use:

tf workspace /delete "WORKSPACENAME;PREVIOUSUSERACCOUNT" 

Answer 2

If you have administrative rights to the collection you can use the TF command located in the Visual Studio\Common7\IDE directory to do this without having to install another tool.

First list the workspaces associated with the user:

TF workspaces /collection:"http://tfsserver:8080/tfs/collection_name" /owner:owner_id

This will return the list of workspaces owned by the user and computer they are associated with

To delete a named workspace:

TF workspace /delete workspacename;owner_id /collection:"http://tfsserver:8080/tfs/collection_name"