Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to unlock a user in Oracle by using the ALTER USER ACCOUNT UNLOCK
statement.
To unlock a user in Oracle, you follow these steps:
- First, log in to the Oracle Database as a
SYS
user. - Then, use
ALTER USER
statement to unlock the user as follows:
ALTER USER username IDENTIFIED BY password ACCOUNT UNLOCK;

Note that if you unlock an account without resetting the password, then the password remains expired, therefore, the IDENTIFIED BY password
clause is necessary. The first time the user logs in to the Oracle Database, he needs to change his password.
Let’s see an example of unlock a user.
Suppose user alice
is locked. When alice
logs in, she will see the following message:
Enter user-name: alice@pdborcl
Enter password:
ERROR:
ORA-28000: the account is locked
To unlock the user alice
, you use these steps:
First, log in to the Oracle Database using theot
user:
Enter user-name: ot@orclpdb
Enter password: <ot_password>
Then, use the ALTER USER
statement to unlock user alice
:
ALTER USER alice IDENTIFIED BY abcd1234 ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
Note that abcd1234
is the new password that alice
will use to log in the Oracle Database.
Now the user alice
should be able to log in the database with the new password.
In this tutorial, you have learned how to unlock a user in the Oracle Database by using the ALTER USER ACCOUNT UNLOCK
statement.