SharePoint: The problem with changing UserQueryMaxTimeout

Consider the following scenario: You have a fairly large and / or complex Active Directory (AD) infrastructure.When using People Picker in a SharePoint 2013 or 2016 site, you are unable to find users from certain domains, and eventually the People Picker control displays an error: “Sorry, we’re having trouble reaching the server”. You do some

SharePoint: People Picker shows disabled user accounts in domain migration scenario

This is one that has plagued SharePoint admins since SharePoint 2007 and earlier.  There are a few other posts out there that mention this behavior, but as far as I can tell, none of them offer a complete solution. Consider the following scenario: The SharePoint farm exists in DomainB. You have users in DomainA. You

SharePoint: Quick Troubleshooting Tip: HTTP Response Headers

Often in troubleshooting SharePoint, we’re interested to know on which Web-Front-End (WFE) a certain request landed. When you have multiple WFEs that are load balanced, this is not easily discernable. One trick is to edit your HOSTS file and point the load balanced URL at the IP address of one WFE. That method certainly has

SharePoint: All about non-imported user profiles

I find there is much confusion around this topic, so I’ll try to clear it up here. First off, non-imported profiles are well… not imported. They were not created by Profile Sync / AD Import / Sync with External Identity Manager. We also refer to these as “unmanaged”, or “stub” profiles because they typically only

SharePoint: This Profile Import error is (usually) normal

Update: There was a fix for this behavior in the SharePoint 2016 August 2020 Public Update (build 16.0.5044.1001), so if you’re past that build and seeing the “batch abort exception”, it’s more likely that it indicates a real problem.   Here’s an example of an error that often occurs during Active Directory Import (aka: ADI,