Update user display name in SharePoint Server 2016

Question

Hello,

I have users who have changed departments. In AD, the user's display name displays the new department name. However, in SharePoint, the user's display name is displaying their old department name. What is the best solution without running code to update the display name in SharePoint?

Answer 1

Hi @Michele DuBose ,

I'm glad to hear you solve the problem ,if you have any issue about SharePoint, you are welcome to raise a ticket in this forum.

By the way, since the Microsoft Q&A community has a policy that "The question author cannot accept their own answer. They can only accept answers by others.". and according to the scenario introduced here: Answering your own questions on Microsoft Q&A, I would make a brief summary of this thread:

[Update user display name in SharePoint Server 2016]

Issue Symptom:
I have users who have changed departments. In AD, the user's display name displays the new department name. However, in SharePoint, the user's display name is displaying their old department name. What is the best solution without running code to update the display name in SharePoint?

Current status:
The issue is resolved. The department was not checked in the User Profile Service synchronization connection. Once I'd updated the synchronization connection to include the new department, the display name was corrected.

You could click the "Accept Answer" button for this summary to close this thread, and this can make it easier for other community member's to see the useful information when reading this thread. Thanks for your understanding!

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Answer 2

Hi @Michele DuBose ,

1.Change the username in Active Directory.

2.Run a Full User Profile Synchronization from Central Admin.

3.Verify in the User Profile Service Application that the change has been synchronized to what was set in Step 1.

4.Using the “login name” from Step 3 run the following command to update the “hidden” user information list.

Set-spuser “domainname\username” -web “your SharePoint URL”  

5.From Central Admin select Monitoring -> Review Job Definitions and run the “User Profile Service Application – User Profile to SharePoint Full Synchronization” job.

6.Run the following to ensure the change has been synchronized in SharePoint.

Get-spuser -web “your SharePoint URL”  

7.Further verify in SharePoint that the users “stamped footprint” (user display name in user information list) has been updated to reflect the change in Step 1 by navigating to an object “modified or created” by the user.

If the username has ALREADY been changed for some time and the User Profile Synchronization job has already been run, perform Steps 4 – 7.

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Answer 3

Hi @Jinwei Li-MSFT ,

From your solution, it seems I'll have to run code. If I run a Full User Profile Synchronization from Central Admin, will this impact performance? In other words, should this be ran after hours? In addition, for my understanding, why does running the User Profile Synchronization only not fix the issue? The job for this service runs daily every 5 minutes.

Answer 4

@Jinwei Li-MSFT

What would be the steps or commands to run for updating all users in SharePoint?

Answer 5

The issue is resolved. The department was not checked in the User Profile Service synchronization connection. Once I'd updated the synchronization connection to include the new department, the display name was corrected.