Re: Need help with "User does not exist" error

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Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 15:45:59 -0600

You may have some old remnants in SQL. When you add users to WSS sites
their information is stored in SQL, it is not accessed via the AD anymore.
You can look around in SQL and see if the user you are trying to add exists
already. If so, delete those references and try again.

here's the text of a post I posted in September. The problem was different,
but the post tells where in SQL to look for the data, and how to use
Enterprise Manager to find it. Try searching for both the username and the
email address.

tk

From: "Todd Klindt" <usenet@klindt.org>
Subject: Re: Problems adding users
Date: Friday, September 10, 2004 2:53 PM

Okay, I had to do some SQL surgery this afternoon that may or may not help.
First, here's the situation we were trying to fix. A domain username was
created and spelled wrong. We didn't realize this until after the user had
been added to several WSS sites. First we tried to rename the user, but WSS
wouldn't budge. Each time we added the new username, it would show up in
"User Management" as the misspelled username. We deleted the username in AD
and recreated it, spelling it correctly. Again WSS had thoughts about that
username and password and the user either could not log in, and showed up in
"user management" with the misspelled username.

When I got called in the user existed in two sites and a cross site group.
To try to alleviate the email address problem one of the other admins
changed the user's email address in AD, which showed up in one site. He
could log into one site that he was added to after the email address was
changed. His user could not be added to one site as WSS said it was already
added, but it didn't show up in User Management for the site. I went into
Enterprise Manager and queried the "UserInfo" table in the content database.
I searched for his username using a line like this:

where tp_Login = 'domain\username'

The records that returned showed the sites he was associated with. The
records have the GUID of the sites. I had to search for that GUID in the
"sites" table to get the URL. Once I knew which of the user's records were
for the site I wanted, I removed that record in SQL. I then searched the
"UserInfo" table for occurrences of his correct email address. There were
none. I went into AD and fixed his email address and added him back to the
site. It all seems to work correctly.

I learned one valuable lesson through all this. WSS doesn't handle username
issues very well.

I hope that was all coherent and helps someone. Of course before you
following some schmuck on Usenet's suggestions, back your SQL databases up,
and maybe even restore them once or twice to make sure it all works. I may
well have no idea what I'm talking about here. :)

tk

"Bill" <bill.richmond@ngc.com> wrote in message
news:b070a7d8.0411171218.7565ca22@posting.google.com...
> Alan Cox asked this question on 12/7/03 and Andrew Couch asked it
> again on 1/8/04 but I haven't found any useful responses so here's to
> hoping the third time's a charm...
>
> On the add user screen I add a user in the format domain\login, set
> the access level (e.g. reader) and click OK. On the next page
> (step3-confirm users and step4-send email) the full details of the
> user are displayed, i.e. the email address and display name is
> displayed
> so it would seem that the LDAP query to Active Directory was
> successful. However, clicking on Finish yields the error "the user
> does not exist".
>
> It seems that several people have run into this error in the past. If
> you are one of them, PLEASE email me (and post here) the resolution.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Bill Richmond
> Bill.Richmond@ngc.com

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