Change Log Shows Incorrect “Changed By” Name

Question

I'm on CiviCRM 5.16.2 on WordPress, and we have a situation where we have removed one of our organization's email addresses from one user account and added it to another account, but when the new user takes actions in CiviCRM it still shows the old user's name in various areas, one example being the "Changed By" name in the change log, but it also shows up incorrectly if the user enters a contribution, etc.

To explain in a bit more concrete way:

1. User Alice has email address foo@myorg.org
2. foo@myorg.org email address is removed from Alice's record in CiviCRM
3. foo@myorg.org email address is added to Bob's record in CiviCRM
4. User Bob changes a record in CiviCRM
5. Go to change log for the record, "Changed By" shows up as Alice, and even links to Alice's record if you click on the name in the change log

I don't see a way to fix this in the admin interface and I've confirmed that the email in question is absolutely not still in the old user's record, and if you do a search for the email address the only hit that comes up is the new user, so I'm a bit flummoxed why it'd be behaving this way. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

First, on the wordpress side, check what email is listed for Alice in her wordpress user record. If it still has foo@myorg.org that might be the problem.

Otherwise there's a civicrm_uf_match table in the database that is used to map between user accounts in the CMS (wordpress) and contacts in CiviCRM and it's partly based on email address. If you look in this table the email address might still be showing as connected to Alice's wordpress user id.