Microsoft Knowledge Base Email Alertz

(827749) - In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you may find that you cannot use the Select users and groups -- Web Page Dialog dialog box to search for and add a user to your portal site. When you click Add Users on the Manage Users page, and then click Select...

Search KbAlertz

Advanced Search

Receive Microsoft Knowledge Base articles by E-Mail?

Every night we scan the Microsoft Knowledge Base. If technologies you're interested in are updated, we'll send you an e-mail. You only get one e-mail a day, and only when new articles are added.

Click here to create a
FREE account
Already have an account?
[Click here to Login]











Microsoft Knowledge Base Article

This article contents is Microsoft Copyrighted material.
©2005-©2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Trademarks

Article ID: 827749 - Last Review: May 31, 2007 - Revision: 1.7

You receive an "Unable to retrieve user information from Active Directory directory service" error message when you try to add users to your portal site

SYMPTOMS

In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you may find that you cannot use the Select users and groups -- Web Page Dialog dialog box to search for and add a user to your portal site. When you click Add Users on the Manage Users page, and then click Select users and groups on the Add Users: PortalName page, you may receive the following error message:
Unable to retrieve user information from Active Directory directory service
Additionally, an event ID message that is similar to the following message is logged to the application event log:
Type: Error
Event ID: 201
Description:
Domain 'DomainName' cannot be verified while there is a corresponding entry in the directory service partition configuration. This domain will not be included in the user profile import. Please verify with your directory service administrator whether old settings exist.
However, even though you cannot use the Select users and groups -- Web Page Dialog dialog box to add a user, you can manually add the user to your portal site when you type the name of the user in the Users box in the Step 1: Choose Users area of the Add Users: PortalName page.

CAUSE

This behavior may occur if the user who you want to add is a member of a Microsoft Windows NT4.0 domain that is joined to your Active Directory forest. The Select users and groups -- Web Page Dialog dialog box does not support Windows NT 4.0 domains. You can use the dialog box to search for and add users who are members of a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or Microsoft Windows 2000 domain. However, you cannot use the dialog box to retrieve user information from a Windows NT 4.0 domain.

WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior, type the name of the user or users who you want to add in the Users box in the Step 1: Choose Users area of the Add Users: PortalName page when you add a user or users to your portal site. To do so, follow these steps:
  1. On the Manage Users page of your portal site, click Add Users.
  2. On the Add Users: PortalName page, in the Step 1: Choose Users area, type the name of the user or users who you want to add in the Users box.

    Use the DomainName\UserName format when you specify the user name. If you add more than one user, separate each user name with a semicolon character (;).
  3. In the Step 2: Choose Permissions area, click to select the check boxes next to the site groups that you want to the users to belong to, and then click Next.
  4. In the Step 3: Confirm Users area, verify the e-mail address, the user name, and the display name information of the user or users who you want to add.
  5. In the Step 4: Send E-mail area, if you want to send an e-mail message, click to select the Send the following e-mail to let these users know they've been added check box, and then type the information that you want to include in the e-mail message.
  6. Click Finish.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about managing users in SharePoint Portal Server, see the "Portal Site Security" topic in the "Security" section of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX101494611033.aspx (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX101494611033.aspx)

APPLIES TO
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Keywords: 
kberrmsg kbprb KB827749
       

Community Feedback System

Very often, it takes hours to solve a problem. Very often, you've looked high and low, and have tried a lot of solutions. When you finally found it, chances are, it was because someone else helped you. Here's your chance to give back. Use our community feedback tool to let others know what worked for you and what didn't.

Please also understand that the community feedback system is not warranted to be correct, it's simply a system that we've built to let people try and help each other. If something in a feedback response doesn't make sense to you, or you're not comfortable making changes that the feedback talks about (like registry edits), please consult a professional.

Thank you for using kbAlertz.com Feedback System.

-- Scott Cate

Anonymous User Report As Irrelevant  
Written: 7/12/2004 7:30 PM
Well that is a BS Solution. There has to be a "FIX" for this.

Anonymous User Reported as Irrelevant  
Written: 7/12/2004 9:07 PM
OK, the fix I found for this behavior is to check that your computers are on the same Subnet. If not then you will get this error. I found It kind of weird that I got this issue with a brand new 2003 Domain setup. So If you do not have NT 4.0 as a issue look at the network addresses.

Anonymous User Report As Irrelevant  
Written: 9/9/2004 9:47 AM
I am facing same problem with "Microsoft Windows 2000 domain" also.

Nguyen Duc Trung - ductrungndt NOSPAM-AT-NOSPAM yahoo.com Report As Irrelevant  
Written: 9/15/2004 9:54 PM
My Windows Domain is "Microsoft Windows 2000". When I just started the SP server, it worked well. But after that, I receive the same message.

steeleb Report As Irrelevant  
Written: 1/13/2005 6:06 PM
I am also running a windows 2000 domain and SP initially would find but then for some reason became unable to locate users

RBeerMan Reported as Irrelevant  
Written: 6/21/2005 3:55 PM
This looks like a DNS resolution problem. I discovered that if the server can't resolve the domain name of the server (e.g. "ping thedomain.com" ), this error message is received. After fixing this DNS issue and executing a "ipconfig /flushdns" command everything started to work OK.

Seth Report As Irrelevant  
Written: 7/12/2005 10:54 AM
Ok, I have the same situation as "fuul" above and I have tried the solution from "rbeerman" and still have the problem. The servers can talk to one another, are on same subnet, dns resolves, and I can import from AD....but still get the "Unable to retrieve user information from Active Directory directory service" error when I try to look up people....any ideas?

Yasser Reported as Irrelevant  
Written: 12/5/2005 1:15 AM
Is it necessarily to have an exchange installed so the sharepoint will use one of it's services to import the users? ... actualy it's only a doubt