Symptoms
You are trying to create a new managed account and what you get is either:
- New-SPManagedAccount : Some or all identity references could not be translated error when you try to do it with New-SPManagedAccount PowerShell cmdlet
- The specified user <AccountName> could not be found. Some or all identity references could not be translated when you try to do it in Central Administration GUI
What to check to pinpoint the issue
- If the account name you are adding as managed is longer than 20 symbols
The reason why it doesn’t work
In this post I describe the case when an account has a name longer than 20 symbols (however, there might be other reasons for that error, such as deleted AD account). This easily can happen if you use descriptive account names, ruled by naming conventions or common sense.
Keep reading if you want to know what’s going on here or skip description right to the solutions part.