There are plenty of situations where a CRM user’s AD account is deleted and re-created. –Such as when a user leaves an organization “Forever!” only to return later – or where where a user’s AD account gets deleted or changed, (due to name change or correction after the user record had already been created in CRM.)

In previous versions of CRM, there wasn’t a way to re-connect that CRM user to a new/different/updated AD account. You would have to disable the existing CRM user record, create a new user record and using SQL edit the ‘domainname’ field of the disabled record to avoid a duplicate (since you can’t delete the old user record.)

I’ve also recently experienced a case where, after an upgrade or migration, a one or more users with seemingly valid CRM Accounts, were unable to log in to CRM – receiving the message “Invalid User Authentication / The User Authentication passed to the platform is not valid”

UserAuthError1

 

(or with DevErrors turned on: “No Microsoft Dynamics CRM User exists with the specified domain name and user ID” )

UserAuthError

 

In CRM 4.0, you can connect a user’s account to a new (or replacement) Active Directory account, by simply changing the domain name to another (non-crm) ad account, saving it and the changing it back to correct user’s account. – You can do the same to re-establish the link between a CRM user and their AD login.

  1. Login as a CRM Administrator
  2. Go to Settings / Administration / Users
  3. Open the CRM User record for the changed/problematic user.
  4. Temporarily change the Domain Login Name to another Active Directory user account (one that is not a CRM user.)
  5. Save, Then change the Domain Login Name back to the correct user.
  6. (The user’s name / details should be refreshed from AD now.)
  7. Save and Close.