Population dynamics of excited atoms in dissipative cavities is investigated in this work. We present a method of controlling populations of excited atoms in dissipative cavities. For the initial state |ee AB |00 ab , the repopulation of excited atoms can be obtained by using atom-cavity couplings and non-Markovian effects after the atomic excited energy decays to zero. For the initial state |gg AB |11 ab , the two atoms can also be populated to the excited states from the initial ground states by using atom-cavity couplings and nonMarkovian effects. And the stronger the atom-cavity coupling or the non-Markovian effect is, the larger the number of repopulation of excited atoms is. Particularly, when the atomcavity coupling or the non-Markovian effect is very strong, the number of repopulation of excited atoms can be close to one in a short time and will tend to a steady value in a long time.