What causes "user ID not valid" in overleaf/overleaf?

Open the users file and fix or remove the line that is not a 24-char hex ObjectId string (the error stops at the first bad ID).

overleaf/overleaf · error · Error

user ID not valid

Error message

user ID not valid

What it means

_validateUserIdList in clear_sessions_set_must_reconfirm.mjs iterates a list of user IDs and throws 'user ID not valid' for the first entry that is not a syntactically valid MongoDB ObjectId (per ObjectId.isValid). The script requires every line of the input file to be a 24-character hex string so it can pass real IDs to UserUpdater. It is an input-validation guard, not a database lookup: a well-formed-but-unknown ID would pass this check and fail later in _handleUser.

Source

Thrown at services/web/scripts/clear_sessions_set_must_reconfirm.mjs:30

  failedSet: [],
  success: [],
  printSummary: () => {
    console.log(
      {
        success: processLogger.success,
        failedClear: processLogger.failedClear,
        failedSet: processLogger.failedSet,
      },
      `\nDONE. ${processLogger.success.length} successful. ${processLogger.failedClear.length} failed to clear sessions. ${processLogger.failedSet.length} failed to set must_reconfirm.`
    )
  },
}

function _validateUserIdList(userIds) {
  if (!Array.isArray(userIds)) throw new Error('users is not an array')

  userIds.forEach(userId => {
    if (!ObjectId.isValid(userId)) throw new Error('user ID not valid')
  })
}

async function _handleUser(userId) {
  try {
    await UserUpdater.promises.updateUser(userId, {
      $set: { must_reconfirm: true },
    })
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(`Failed to set must_reconfirm ${userId}`, error)
    processLogger.failedSet.push(userId)
    return
  }

  try {
    await UserAuditLogHandler.promises.addEntry(
      userId,
      'must-reset-password-set',

View on GitHub (pinned to 28ad3b03b7)

Solutions

Open the users file and fix or remove the line that is not a 24-char hex ObjectId string (the error stops at the first bad ID).
Validate the file before running: grep -nEv '^[0-9a-fA-F]{24}$' users.txt to list bad lines.
Filter in code: users.map(s=>s.trim()).filter(s=>ObjectId.isValid(s)) before calling the script's helpers.
If IDs come from an upstream query, re-export using the correct projection (e.g. _id) so raw ObjectIds are written.

Example fix

// before (users.txt)
user_id
65d1f1e0c9e77d001a2b3c4
// after (users.txt)
65d1f1e0c9e77d001a2b3c4

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

import { ObjectId } from 'mongodb'
const ids = fs.readFileSync(file, 'utf8').trim().split('\n').map(s => s.trim()).filter(Boolean)
const bad = ids.filter(id => !ObjectId.isValid(id))
if (bad.length) throw new Error(`invalid ObjectIds at lines: ${bad.join(', ')}`)

Type guard

const isValidObjectId = (v) => typeof v === 'string' && /^[0-9a-fA-F]{24}$/.test(v)

Try / catch

try {
  await script.run(userIds)
} catch (err) {
  if (err.message === 'user ID not valid') {
    console.error('Bad ID in input file; sanitize with ObjectId.isValid filter')
  } else throw err
}

Prevention

Pre-sanitize input files with grep -nEv '^[0-9a-fA-F]{24}$' to find bad lines
Strip blank lines and whitespace before validating
Never mix emails and ObjectIds in one ID list
Validate the whole list, not just the first element, before invoking the script

When it happens

Trigger: Running `node clear_sessions_set_must_reconfirm.mjs users.txt` where the file contains a line that is not a valid ObjectId: an email instead of an ID, a truncated ID, whitespace-only or blank lines that survive trimming, or IDs copied with extra characters/quotes.

Common situations: Exporting user lists from logs or CSVs where a header row ('user_id') or non-user rows get mixed in; hand-edited ID files; older exports using a different ID format; forgetting the file is newline-separated ObjectIds.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of overleaf/overleaf@28ad3b03b7 (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8ca7f639a7f81dc5. Report an issue: GitHub.