BuddyPress

If logged in as an admin how do I go about activating a users account which did not confirm the email?

*I am setting up bp on a local install and creating a bunch of dummy users with fake email accounts.

**Secondarily: Where do I turn off the email activation?

Several ways, but check out this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/unconfirmed/

To disable activations (I would strongly recommend against this – it’d let spammers access your site much more easily), put this code somewhere, maybe in bp-custom.php:

add_action( 'bp_core_signup_send_activation_key', '__return_false' );

thanks Paul.
I only planned on adding this to my local dev site, would never consider doing this in a public setting