SharePoint 2013 – User profile synchronization stuck in Synchronizing state
My User Profile Synchronization service has been running without issue for some time but today I noticed it had been stuck in a Synchronizing state for the past 5 days. I attempted to stop the sync but it stayed in a stopping state for several hours before I gave up and restarted the server. After a reboot the synchronization was still stuck in a stopping state. The only way I was able to resolve this was to stop the User Profile Synchronization service and re-provision it. Here are the steps:
- In Central Administration navigate to System Settings -> Manage services on server
- Change the server to the one hosting the User Profile Synchronization Service
- Stop the User Profile Synchronization Service
- Add the Farm account to the local administrators group on the server hosting the service
- Start the User Profile Synchronization Service
- Remove the Farm account from the local administrators group on the server hosting the service
Now I am able to start (provision) the User Profile Synchronization Service and start a synchronisation.
This was resolved for me after restarting the Fore Front Identity manager synchronization service form the services.msc.
I hear that it is not a recommendation to manually start / stop the forefront identity manager and forefront identity manager synchronization service . But it started importing profiles after doing this.