User/Group cannot be found/created at destination/source

The resolution for this issue will change depending on whether you are working with Insane Mode on Office 365, or On-Premises.

Office 365 solution

On-Premises solution

Symptoms

When attempting to copy an item, Sharegate displays one of the following error messages:

• The permissions for '<USER>' were not copied because '<USER>' does not exist at the destination.
• The group '<GROUP>' was not found at the destination. The selection group filter was reset to all users.
• The group's owner '<USER>' cannot be found at the destination. The current user will be used instead.
• The user '<USER>' could not be created at the destination. This is probably because the user was either deactivated or deleted in the Active Directory.
• The user '<USER>' could not be found at the destination. This is probably because the user was either deactivated or deleted in the Active Directory.
• The user or group '<USER_OR_GROUP>' is required for this workflow and cannot be found at the source (or destination).
  
• The owner of the term set could not be found at the destination. The current user has been assigned.
• No owner was set on the Term Set. The current user has been assigned.
• The following users and groups were not found: John Doe
  
• Property 'Editor': The user 'john' could not be found at the destination. The current user has been assigned.
• The workflow refers to the user 'john', but this user could not be found at the destination. It might prevent the workflow from executing correctly.
• The alert 'UserAlert' refers to a user account with id 1 which could not be found at the source. It may have been removed from the user information list.
• The alert 'UserAlert' refers to a user account with id 1 which could not be found at the destination. It may have been removed from the user information list.
• The default group '<GROUP>' will be ignored because it could not be found at the destination.
  
• The list is configured to mask users.

Error code

Details

Because many SharePoint environments have been used for multiple years, there is a possibility that some users exist in the source environment, but not at the destination. For instance, if a user left the company, SharePoint will keep a reference to the user to preserve system fields like Created By and Modified By. But, at the destination, if the user no longer exists (which most of the time means it has been deactivated in your Active Directory), then there is no way for SharePoint to create a user and link it to that account. The way around this issue is to configure user mappings to specify a user (or users) to use as a replacement at the destination.

Additionally, in some cases the list or library may be configured to mask the values of People fields. This makes it impossible for Sharegate to recover the value of the field from the source.

The error is often associated with a given property, for example, Property Assignee: The following users and groups were not found: John Doe. This can also occur in other contexts where a user is referenced, such as in a workflow or as the owner of a term set.

The error occurs because the specified value, which is a user or a group, is not considered valid by SharePoint. The most common cause for this is if the source column value was set to a user who has since left the organization. When creating or updating an item, SharePoint does not accept values that are not currently valid users or groups in a Person or Group column, which is why Sharegate displays this error. SharePoint considers a user to be valid in 2 cases:

• The user is present in the site collection's User Information List
• An active user can be found through the User Profile Service (which is often synchronized with your organization Active Directory)

Solutions

Office 365

When migrating to Office 365 using the Insane Mode migration, it is possible to maintain the values for users that no longer exist on the destination site. However, this only extends to users and AD groups. This does not apply to SharePoint groups. Any such groups must be migrated manually before the migration to ensure that they remain.

On-Premises

There are 2 possible solutions to this issue:

1. If the error is associated with a property, set a default value (which can be blank) in Sharegate to use when the source item refers to a user who is no longer valid. This can be done the following way:
   1. Create a Property Template.
   2. If you need to preserve the source value to consult it later on, you can preserve it by creating a new Single line of text column. In this example, this column could be called something like Original Assignee.
   3. You can now map the source Assignee column with Original Assignee. You can optionally remove the mapping to Assignee (if it is not a required column).
   4. Once done, this tells Sharegate to put the value from the source Assignee column both in the Assignee column and in the Original Assignee column.
   5. Now, when entering the value in the Original Assignee column, Sharegate preserves the name of the source user even if the user is no longer valid (there are no restrictions about valid or invalid users in a text column).
      • Please note that Sharegate will try to add the user to both the user column and the new text column, so the default user column will still return a warning.
2. Use Map Users and Groups to map the source users who are no longer valid with users who are still valid. For example, you can re-assign the tasks of a former employee to someone else in the same department. A default user can also be set to replace any user who is no longer valid and for whom no mapping was set.