Failed Site Move with Content and Structure Mode: User cannot be found Error

Question

We are having an issue with what would seem like an easy process: moving/copying vanilla (no customization outside of SPD) SharePoint sites in Content & Structure mode. The user copying/moving is a site collection administrator.

1. Content and Structure Mode
2. Copy Site
3. After a while, receive error page and no site:

User cannot be found.Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: User cannot be found. ---> Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: User cannot be found. at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPUserCollection.GetByID(Int32 id) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.WebSerializer.SetObjectData(Object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context, ISurrogateSelector selector) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.ParseObject(Type objectType, Boolean isChildObject) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.DeserializeObject(Type objectType, Boolean isChildObject, DeploymentObject envelope) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ObjectSerializer.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportObjectManager.ProcessObject(XmlReader xmlReader) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.DeserializeObjects() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.Run() at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Internal.DeploymentWrapper.Copy(String[] sourceSmtObjectIds, String destSmtObjectId) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Internal.DeploymentWrapper.Copy(String[] sourceSmtObjectIds, String destSmtObjectId) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Internal.WebControls.CopyObjects.Copy()Operation to Copy '[URL]' to '[New URL]' Failed

I read this as "we can't copy/move some of your items because the Created By/Modified By user is not longer in Active Directory" but that seems like a problem that others would have had in the past.

Answer 1

This weirdly involved a Records Management Center-related permission level. It was unused in this collection and, after we removed it, we encountered no problems.

Answer 2

What is likely happening is that the UserInfo table does not contain a reference to a user that, as you pointed out, no longer exists in Active Directory.

The general way to solve this is to re-save any items that have been modified/created by the missing user.