Replace users in lists accross an entire site collection in SharePoint 2016.

Question

We have some users in our SP 2016 environment That have bad accounts in list field items. I have wrote some powershell code that will look for a user and replace them, but only if they are being displayed in the list using show field = "Name(with presence)" . It does this by looking for a string with the "Display Name"

Anyways, this doesn't work well if they people field is being displayed as just and "ID" or something.

I have been looking into the User Information List. Can I replace the user there and the site collection follow suite for all the instances of that user in all subsites in site collection?

Basically I just want a way to replace a users bad account in all list item fields in the entire site collection, no matter how they are displayed in the list using powershell.

This seems like it should be a simple task, but it's looking more complicated by the minute.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide.

Answer 1

Hi @Smith88 ,

Here are some suggestion based on the query in the question.

1. User Information is a SharePoint system list, it will add user automatically once the user is resolved in any People Picker. It's not supported to update the user object directly in this list.
2. To update person field in SharePoint List Items, it needs to get the User object firstly using $web.EnsureUser and then update, please refer the following script: Update Single Value Person field:

       Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue  
   
       $SiteURL = "http://sp2016/sites/dev"  
       $ListName = "Employee"                 
       $FieldName="MyPerson"  
   
   
       $web = Get-SPWeb $SiteURL  
       $list= $web.lists[$listName]  
   
       $ListItem  = $List.GetItemByID(3)  
   
   
       $UserAccount="contoso2016\Jerry"  
       #Get the User  
       $User=$web.EnsureUser($UserAccount)  
       $UserFieldValue = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldUserValue($web, $User.ID, $User.LoginName)  
   
   
       $ListItem[$FieldName] = $UserFieldValue  
       $ListItem.Update()  
   

Update Multiple value Person field:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue  

$SiteURL = "http://sp2016/sites/dev"  
$ListName = "Employee"                 
$FieldName="MulPerson"  


$web = Get-SPWeb $SiteURL  
$list= $web.lists[$listName]  


$ListItem  = $List.GetItemByID(3)  


$UserAccounts="Contoso2016\Jerry;Contoso2016\bk"  
$UserAccountsColl = $UserAccounts -split ';'  

[Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldUserValueCollection] $UserCollection = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldUserValueCollection  
foreach($UserAccount in $UserAccountsColl)  
{  

    $User=$web.EnsureUser($UserAccount)  


    $UserFieldValue = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldUserValue($Web, $User.ID, $User.LoginName)  
    $UserCollection.Add($UserFieldValue)  
}  

#update the Multiple value Person or Group field  
$ListItem[$FieldName] = $UserCollection  
$ListItem.Update()  

Reference:

Get-Set Person or Group (People Picker) Field Value using PowerShell in SharePoint

Thanks
Best Regards

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