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SharePoint people picker cannot find a user or guest

Short answer: if the people picker finds no one, the person may be an outside guest your site has not shared with yet, or sharing with outsiders may be limited, so share the site with their email address and ask your admin to check external sharing. If it says the user no longer exists, Microsoft says the site holds a cached record in the UserInfo list that is not removed when a person is deleted, and your admin can remove it. Two more causes are a re-created account with a different ID and old results stored in your browser. Work through the checks below in order.

What the people picker is

A Person or Group column lets you pick people in a list item, for example an owner or an approver. The box you type into is called the people picker. It does not search the whole internet. It searches the people your organization and the site know about. If a name is not in that set, the picker finds nothing.

Signs you have this problem

Step 1. Check what kind of person it is

Ask one question: is this person inside your organization, or a guest from outside?

  1. Inside the organization: go to Step 4 if the picker says the user no longer exists, or Step 5 if it just shows no results.
  2. Guest from another company: go to Step 2.

Step 2. Guests must have been invited first

Microsoft's page on external sharing explains that guests are outside people who get an invitation by email, and that they do not have a license in your organization. Our reading, not a Microsoft rule: a guest who was never invited will not be found by name. Microsoft's pages do not describe a way to type a new outside address into a people picker and have it create the guest for you.

One way to start:

  1. Share the site (or a file on it) with the guest by their email address. The sharing step sends the invitation.
  2. Wait for the guest to accept it.
  3. Try the picker again.

Microsoft also says that sharing with a guest through its current system creates a guest account in your directory. If a guest used to open links without any account, ask your admin whether that guest now needs one. Microsoft has described changes to older sharing links on its Entra B2B page.

Step 3. Sharing may be limited

SharePoint has sharing settings for the whole organization and for each site. Microsoft says that if the two do not match, the more restrictive one applies. A site can also have outside sharing turned off. Microsoft notes that even when the organization allows outside sharing, not every new site allows it by default.

You probably cannot change these settings yourself. They are admin settings. Ask your admin two things:

Microsoft says that with Microsoft Entra B2B integration, "Microsoft Entra external collaboration settings, such as guest invite settings and collaboration restrictions, apply." Your admin can check those too.

Step 4. The user "no longer exists" but is still here

This message can mean a person has a stale record on the site. Here is how Microsoft describes it. When someone visits a SharePoint site, a copy of their information is saved in a hidden list on that site, called the UserInfo list. If that person is later deleted from the organization, the saved copy is not removed. Microsoft says the profile can still show up, which may cause confusion in the people picker.

A second case appears on Microsoft's page as "Site User ID Mismatch". Microsoft describes it as a user who is deleted and then has the account re-created with the same user name. It adds that the new account "is created by using a different ID value." Microsoft also says the page "should be used to troubleshoot Profile Property synchronization or mismatched ID issues only as advised by Microsoft Customer Support Services." Here is how that looks in plain words: a person was deleted and then their account was created again with the same user name. The new account has a different internal ID, so the site still points at the old one. Treat it as a separate problem from the stale record, and work on it with your admin and Microsoft support.

What you can try, in order:

  1. Ask your admin to remove the person from the site and add them again. A Microsoft Q&A answer does this in the SharePoint admin center, on the site's Membership tab.
  2. Delete the Person column and make a new one. This is a heavy step. Test first in a copy of the list, because the values in the old column will be lost.
  3. Ask your admin to remove the old record. Microsoft's page on removing users says this is done by an admin, who adds a short path to the end of the site address and chooses Delete Users from Site Collection. It also says the person only appears there if they visited that site before. This step changes the site for everyone, so leave it to your admin.

A Microsoft Q&A question about this exact message, on SharePoint Server 2019, describes a list where the error showed only in the modern list view, for every user. The suggestions in that thread were the same ones above: make a new Person column, test in a new list, remove and add the user, and delete the user from the site. The thread does not show a confirmed fix. The moderators suggested opening a support ticket with Microsoft. If every person in your list shows the error, that is the step to take.

Words to hand to your admin

Our advice, not a Microsoft rule: send this note as it is. Change the names and the site address.

"A person who was deleted still shows in the people picker on our site, or the picker says the user no longer exists. Microsoft's page 'Troubleshoot user profile removal issues in SharePoint' says user information is cached in the UserInfo list and is not removed when the user or guest is deleted. Please check whether this person is still in the UserInfo list on this site and remove them. The person is Person Name and the site is Site Address. If the account was deleted and re-created with the same user name, please check for a site user ID mismatch."

Microsoft's page describes two ways for an admin to do this. The first is to open the site address with "/_layouts/15/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0" added to the end, select the person, and on the Actions menu choose Delete Users from Site Collection. The second is the SharePoint Online Management Shell command Remove-SPOUser for each site collection the person visited. Microsoft says the first option "is available only if the user previously browsed to the site collection."

Person field in Power Apps

Microsoft's pages in the sources below do not cover the Power Apps person field. The checks above apply to the SharePoint list the app reads from. If the picker in the app shows the same missing person, test the same person in the list itself first.

Step 5. Clear stored browser results

Microsoft's page on removing users says SharePoint stores some results in your browser, including in the people picker. A person who was fully removed can still show up for that reason. Microsoft says clearing the browser history fixes it, and to also clear cookies and website data. Try this if only one computer shows the old name.

Step 6. Keep the Person column simple

Our advice, not a Microsoft rule: small habits help.

  1. Use the Person or Group column type for people, not a text column. Text never goes stale, but it also cannot send email or filter by user.
  2. When someone leaves, change the owner on their open items before your admin deletes the account.
  3. For guests, keep a short note in the list of which company they are from. The picker shows names, and two guests can have the same name.
  4. Test the picker with one new item after any change to sharing.

What to avoid

Honest limits

Microsoft's pages describe how stale records and guest accounts work, but they do not give a single fix that works every time for the message "this user was no longer existing". The steps in Microsoft's pages for removing records need admin rights. If your list is for a small team and you are not an admin, the quickest route is to give your admin the person's name, the site address and the exact message, and ask them to check the four causes above. Exact names and menus may differ in your version of Microsoft 365.

If you want to filter a list by the current user, or set the current user as the default, see "Default a SharePoint column to today or the current user".

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs to build". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

Why is the SharePoint people picker not working?

When it finds no one, the person may be a guest who was never shared with, sharing with outsiders may be limited, a saved record may be stale, or your browser may hold old results. Check them in the order of the steps above.

Why does a deleted user still show in the SharePoint people picker?

Microsoft says a user's information is cached in the UserInfo list when they browse to a site, and it is not removed when the user or guest is deleted. Your admin can remove it.

Why does the picker find some guests but not others?

Our reading, not a Microsoft rule: a guest only appears once the person has been invited and your organization has a record of them. Guests who were never invited will not show up by name.

Can I fix this without admin rights?

You can clear your browser results yourself. Removing and re-adding people, sharing settings and old records are admin work, so ask your admin.

The error only shows in the modern view. Is the list broken?

A Microsoft Q&A answer describes that pattern with no confirmed fix. Try a new Person column or a new test list to see whether the problem is the list or the whole site. If every user is affected, ask your admin to open a support ticket with Microsoft.

Sources