The user does not exist or is not unique error even though the user is on the list.

Question

In Edit format when entering a name it takes a very long time to resolve and randomly will produce the error 'The user does not exist or is not unique' even though the user is within the list.

Answer 1

“The user does not exist or is not unique”.

And if you try to add the user directly to a site permission level, for example “Contribute”, no error is thrown on-screen, but the user is not added.

And you cannot add these users to a “People Picker” (Person or Group) list column. The same error occurs:

Also, if you try to add the user to a SharePoint group using PowerShell, it fails with error: “The specified user <userName> could not be found”.

For example:

Add user to SP Group via PowerShell. Just specify the group name:

$web = get-spweb http://teams.contoso.com/sites/team

$user = New-SPUser -UserAlias “i:0#.w|contoso\trailingspace1” -Web $web

Set-SPUser -Identity $user -Web $web -Group “Team Members”

New-SPUser : The specified user i:0#.w|contoso\trailingspace1 could not be found.

Note: In SharePoint 2013 and 2016, you should see the “user does not exist or is not unique” error on-screen when you try to add the user to the group:

Answer 2

Hi @Easterling, Jackie ,

1.It is recommended that you check the attributes of this user in AD, whether you have inadvertently added a space character between the path elements.
2.Ensure that the user account is not disabled or locked out in AD.
3.You could try to see if the problem will be reproduced in different lists.

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