How to drop a user from a SQL Server database when you encounter the error message “The database principal owns a schema in the database, and cannot be dropped”

principalowner

So if you have encountered the error above “The database principal owns a schema in the database, and cannot be dropped” you will not be able to drop the user until ownership of the effected schema has been transferred to another user/role. In order to drop the user, you have to find the schema that is assigned first. You can do this by running the script below replacing myUser with the user name in question. 

SELECT name 
FROM  sys.schemas 
WHERE principal_id = USER_ID(myUser)
Then, use the schema found from the above query in place of the SchemaName below. This transfers ownership to dbo. You may need to alter authorization for multiple schema. Just run the statement for each returned schema replacing SchemaName. You can then drop your user.
ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON SCHEMA::SchemaName TO dbo;
 
GO

DROP USER myUser;

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