People Picker not resolving active directory user in SharePoint 2013 site

Question

once again having a people picker not resolving active directory users of a two-way-trust domain. So we configure the picker as described in one of these how to configure picker blogs...

Having done this we now see that the "old" (2010-style) picker resolves the users but the 2013-person-or-group-field does not show up the users in the search result box (it's only showing users of the farm domain). But if we write the e-mail address of the user to the field and confirm the user is resolved correctly.

So, what are we missing? Does the picker configuration really do the same in SP 2010 & 2013?

Answer 1

Solution: there've been wrong data in ActiveDirectoryCustomQuery of the picker settings:

ActiveDirectoryCustomQuery = "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user))"

=> set to null by

ActiveDirectoryCustomQuery = $null

resolved the problem

Answer 2

For some reason, my AD results were being hidden from the people picker. You can look at your AD provider settings using the commands below:

$cpm = Get-SPClaimProviderManager

View all claim provider settings:

get-spclaimprovider

View AD settings:

$ad = get-spclaimprovider -identity "AD"
$ad

To modify the settings:

$ad.IsVisible = $true
$cpm.Update()

Additional References: Hide AD claims provider in a specific web app https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg602075.aspx#properties