How to Delete Playerdata on Your Minecraft Server

Occasionally, deleting playerdata files can be useful in resolving bugs or moderating your server. This article will give you instructions on how to both delete playerdata and restore old playerdata.

Locating the playerdata Files

Playerdata files for Vanilla servers are stored in the folder /world/playerdata

*Note that the world folder may have a different name depending on what the world name is set to in the Game Settings section of the panel or in the server.properties.

Minecraft’s playerdata system holds two playerdata files which are identified using each player’s Universally Unique Identifier (UUID). These files are formatted as playerUUID.dat and playerUUID.dat_old. If you don’t know the UUID of the player you are looking to delete playerdata for, you can look it up using your Minecraft in-game username on mcuuid.net

Making a Backup

Since you will likely end up deleting files in this case, it is advisable to make a backup of your server's data first so you can retrieve those files later if needed. If you're using Nodepanel, you can do this from the Nodepanel Backups tab.

If you do not have access to Nodepanel's backups system it is advisable to, at minimal, make a copy of the two playerdata files mentioned or the playerdata folder as an extra redundancy to restore from if needed.

Deleting the Playerdata File

Once you know the UUID of the player whose playerdata file you are looking to delete, you can delete the playerUUID.dat file within the folder /world/playerdata .

*Note deleting playerdata files will remove the latest version of that player's inventory, experience levels, last known location, etc.

Restoring an Old Playerdata File

As stated before, Minecraft stores two files for each player’s playerdata. A playerUUID.dat file and a playerUUID.dat_old file. The playerdata.dat file holds the information for that player’s most recent session of gameplay on the server. The playerUUID.dat_old file holds the information for that player’s second most recent session. If the playerUUID.dat file does need to be deleted, you can optionally attempt to restore the second most recent session using the playerdata.dat_old file. To do this, first, stop the server. Next, delete the playerUUID.dat file. Lastly, rename the playerUUID.dat_old file to playerUUID.dat.