How to bulk update records in a SharePoint List with a lookup column (with type Person)

Question

In SharePoint 2007 I have a List containing two columns:

• "Title" of type single line of text
• "Email" of type Person or Group

Because I have to update a lot of records, I use export to Excel to update them. However, when I try to update the email of a record in Excel, I get the error message:

Data validation error; Datatype lookup; Restriction: Value must match one of the listed items;

Is there a way to bulk update these records?

Answer 1

The "Email" column is in fact a lookup of Users; a choice of the users on your SharePoint site.

Each e-mail address corresponds to a user, so in changing the e-mail address you are attempting to change the user associated with that item. This means the e-mail address you are changing it to must match up to the e-mail address of an existing user.

If you're trying to update a user's e-mail address (rather than change the user associated with the item), then you'll have to do that directly in the user record.