'The user does not exist or is not unique' error when selection Audiense targetting in SharePOint Online Site Pages

Anis ELTAIEF 1 Reputation point
2021-03-08T08:54:51.053+00:00

Hi Community,

I'm experiencing the error "The user does not exist or is not unique" when selecting an audience from page properties

More informations;
Environment: SharePoint online
Almost of Audiences contains dash characters in display name ('-')
This doesn't work also with audiences that don't contain specials characters in display names.
Pages type: Modern pages

SharePoint
SharePoint
A group of Microsoft Products and technologies used for sharing and managing content, knowledge, and applications.
9,684 questions
0 comments

3 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Jerry Xu-MSFT 7,921 Reputation points
    2021-03-09T08:17:59.11+00:00

    Hi, @Anis ELTAIEF ,

    Would you like to provide a screenshot of this error? According to your description, all the audiences does not work audience targeting. Would you like to provide the whole process? I will test in my end to see if anything goes wrong. And do all the pages have this issue?

    If an Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

    0 comments
  2. Anis ELTAIEF 1 Reputation point
    2021-03-10T06:53:38.803+00:00

    Hi @Jerry Xu-MSFT
    I Have trayed two ways to add the audience field at the "SitePages" level:

    • 1st way activate audience targetting an the "Site Page" Configguration (screen1)
    • 2nd way ; add a field exported from other site using PnPPoowershell : Add-PnPFieldFromXml '<Field ID="{7f759147-c861-4cd6-a11f-5aa3037d9634}" Type="UserMulti" List="UserInfo" Name="_ModernAudienceTargetUserField" StaticName="_ModernAudienceTargetUserField" DisplayName="Audience" Required="FALSE" SourceID="{a925cfc1-7fe7-4002-996d-74065f2c6dd3}" ColName="int2" RowOrdinal="0" ShowField="ImnName" ShowInDisplayForm="TRUE" ShowInListSettings="FALSE" UserSelectionMode="GroupsOnly" UserSelectionScope="0" Mult="TRUE" Sortable="FALSE" Version="1" />' -List "Site Pages"

    All of two ways return "'The user does not exist or is not unique" when i select a group from audience field.
    76173-2021-03-10-07-46-46.png

  3. Mark Seymour 1 Reputation point
    2022-08-16T11:51:30.143+00:00

    I had the same problem and had to remove Audience Targeting from the Library and re-add it before it would work again.

    0 comments