By Alpit Patel and the aibrevo team · October 22, 2026 · 5 min read
Why Is My monday.com Automation Not Running or Deactivated?
Quick answer
monday.com documents eight reasons an automation turns itself off: the owner was deactivated, the owner lost permission, an assignee lost access, a target was deleted, a loop, an item limit, a rate limit, or the account was deactivated for two weeks. Each leaves an error on the board's Automations page, and most are fixed by reactivating a user or toggling it back on.
Part of the guide: monday CRM guide
Key takeaways
- monday.com lists eight reasons an automation is deactivated, and the board's Automations page shows an error that names which one (help article edited Jun 18, 2026, checked Oct 22, 2026).
- Two causes give no notification at all: a deactivated owner and an owner who lost permission. They are visible only on the Automations page, so look there before anything else.
- The exact error for a deactivated owner is "The automation owner was deactivated from your account." Reactivating the user, or transferring ownership, brings the automation back.
- Two automations with the same trigger can fail each other. monday.com's fix is one custom automation with the final-stage action, such as archive, move or delete, as the last step.
- An item limit makes an automation retry in the next minute, and a rate limit disables the template until you toggle it back on.
A monday.com automation that stops running has almost always been deactivated for a reason you can read. Open the board, go to its Automations page, and look for the red error under the automation. monday.com documents eight causes: the owner was deactivated, the owner lost permission, an assignee lost access, a target was deleted, an automation loop, a reached item limit, a rate limit, and an account that was deactivated for two weeks. Some of them send no notification, which is why the page, not your inbox, is where to look.
Checked Oct 22, 2026 against monday.com’s help articles “Why is my automation deactivated?” (edited Jun 18, 2026) and “Avoid failed automation runs due to multiple competing automations” (edited Apr 9, 2026). We did not trigger these failures in a live account.
What are the eight reasons a monday.com automation is deactivated?
| Cause | Error or sign on the Automations page | Notification? | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner deactivated | “The automation owner was deactivated from your account.” | No | Reactivate the user, or transfer ownership |
| Owner unauthorised | “The user who created this automation doesn’t have permissions to make changes on this board.” | No | Resubscribe the user, restore column permission, or change role back from viewer |
| Assignee lost access | A notice that board permissions changed | Yes | Resubscribe the assignee or reassign, then toggle on |
| Target deleted | “The selected board no longer exists.” (for a board) | Yes, when triggered | Restore from trash, or pick a new target |
| Automation loop | A warning when you build it | Warning at creation | Break the loop |
| Item limit reached | Notification that it is no longer active | Yes | Wait for the retry, or delete or archive items |
| Rate limit reached | Error on the Automations page, template disabled | Error shown | Toggle it back on and reduce triggers |
| Account deactivated two weeks or more | “Your automation was disabled due to your account being deactivated.” | Not stated | Turn it on again |
Source: monday.com Support, Why is my automation deactivated?, edited Jun 18, 2026, checked Oct 22, 2026. The Notification column paraphrases the article’s “how do I know” sections.
How do I fix an automation whose owner was deactivated?
The owner is the person who built it, and monday ties the automation to that user. The fix has three parts, per the help article:
- Reactivate the user. Profile picture, Administration, Directory, Users, filter for Inactive users, three-dot menu, Activate user. Only an account admin can do this, and the person must come back as a member or guest. Viewers cannot create or edit automations.
- Transfer ownership. Administration, Directory, Automations ownership, choose the current and new owner, click Transfer ownership. The article says automations are reactivated after the transfer, and that the deactivated user must be reactivated first. You can also use Transfer ownership from the three-dot menu on one automation.
- Set a default owner for the future, under the setting “Keep automations running when users are deactivated,” and click Save changes.
The unauthorised-owner case looks similar and has a different fix. It happens when the owner was unsubscribed from a private board, had column permission revoked, was changed to a viewer, or lost the right to create automations. Resubscribe them or restore the permission, or recreate the automation from scratch.
Why do two automations on one board fail each other?
monday.com calls these competing automations: the same trigger starts both at once and their actions conflict. Its example is two automations on “When status changes to something,” one that archives the item and one that changes another status. The second cannot run on an archived item, so some runs succeed and some fail, and you get a failure notification.
The main offenders are “final stage” actions: moving an item to another board, archiving it, or deleting it. The fix in monday’s article is to delete the separate automations and build one custom automation that does both, with the final-stage action as the last step: “When status changes to something, then set status to something, and then archive item.”
The Run history shows every run, successful and failed. Click a failed run and it opens an explanation outlined in red. It is the fastest way to tell a competing-automation failure from a permission failure.
What if the item limit or the rate limit is the cause?
- Item limit. If an automation tries to create an item when the board’s limit is reached, it is deactivated, and you are notified. monday’s article says it retries in the next minute, so wait before changing anything. Each board’s limit depends on the account tier. If the board is truly full, delete or archive items and reactivate the automation on the Automations page.
- Rate limit. Each automation template can perform a limited number of triggers and actions per minute. The article says it can be reached by an automation loop, by triggering through the API or webhooks, or by using batch actions that fire many templates at once. The template is disabled and an error appears; toggle it back on, and find out what triggered it so often. The actual per-minute numbers are on our monday.com automation rate limits page.
Monthly action allowances are a separate matter from these two. They depend on your plan, and how to create recurring tasks in monday.com shows how a schedule consumes them. The plan limits table lists them by tier.
What about deleted targets and old accounts?
If an automation points at a group, column, subitem, board or workspace that was deleted, it is deactivated the next time it triggers, and monday sends a notification naming the change. Deleted elements stay in the trash for 30 days, so restore the item, or edit the automation and choose a new target. If an account was deactivated for two weeks or more and later reactivated, all its automations come back switched off, and each needs to be turned on by hand.
If no automation fits and everything looks normal, check whether monday.com is down before you rebuild anything. For design patterns that avoid these failures, see the monday CRM automation recipes.
When to get help
Get help when many boards depend on automations built by people who have since left, when sales handoffs fail silently, or when stacked automations keep fighting each other. A specialist can audit every automation on a workspace, transfer ownership, merge competing ones into single recipes, and set a default owner so a departure does not switch off the pipeline. Book a short call or send a message, and see the monday.com service page for what aibrevo implements.
Sources
All checked Oct 22, 2026.
- monday.com Support, Why is my automation deactivated? (edited Jun 18, 2026): the eight causes, error messages, ownership transfer, item and rate limits.
- monday.com Support, Avoid failed automation runs due to multiple competing automations (edited Apr 9, 2026): competing automations and the single-automation fix.