How to change a Drupal 6 user password using mysql or phpmyadmin

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: January 15, 2022

Drupal 6 FAQ: How can I change the password of a Drupal user in the database without using the Drupal UI? That is, how can I change a user's password using a database query (such as the need to change the Drupal User 1 password)?

If you ever want/need to change a Drupal 6 user password in your database using the MySQL command line or a tool like PhpMyAdmin, a SQL query like this will do the trick:

update `users` set `pass` = MD5('NewPasswordHere') where `uid` = 5;

In this case I'm updating the password for the Drupal user whose uid is 5, and I'm making their new password "NewPasswordHere".

I learned about this technique on this Drupal.org article How to change the password of User 1. In my case I didn't need to change the password of User 1, but needed to change the password of a different Drupal user, and due to a combination of events I couldn't do this through the web interface.

In summary, if you ever need to change a Drupal 6 user password in the database from a database tool like PhpMyAdmin, or the MySQL command line, that SQL query should do the trick for you.

Drupal 7 and 8

If you need to change the password for a Drupal 7 user, please see this Drupal.org article, as the process seems different.

For resetting user passwords in Drupal 8, I recommend the Drupal Console project. With it, you can reset a user password using this command while your current directory is inside your Drupal 8 project: