How to add Users from another Domain to SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007

When deploying a new SharePoint farm, Admins can often overlook the fact that their users maybe in another domain or forest. To resolve this problem SharePoint 07/1020 must be told where these users are and how to access them.

This can be done using the people picker property. This property must be set using stsadm. You must open Command Prompt (as Administrator) on your SharePoint server.

Then type : cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14(for 2010) and 12 (for 2007)\BIN

You are now ready to execute the command:

stsadm -o -setproperty -url "http" -pn "searchadforests" -pv "example.net",Domain\Username, Password

To get best results ensure that you use the commas. The URL is the URL of your Web App. Example.net shows where your domain name needs to be. You need to also make sure there are no spaces between the Username and password.

The account must be from the Domain you are trying to look up users from. That account should have appropriate permissions in order to find these users.

If you have successfully run the command then you get an "Operation Completed Successfully" message (sometimes this is not true but) you can test this by adding a user from the external domain.