Accessing the User Information List in SharePoint

It is possible to get to the User Information List, a hidden list containing all the users stored in a SharePoint site. You can get to the data either through CSOM as you would a normal SharePoint list, or you can use the OData web services.Learn here how.

It is possible to get to the User Information List, a hidden list containing all the users stored in a SharePoint site. You can get to the data either through CSOM as you would a normal SharePoint list, or you can use the OData web services. Both methods are listed below.

Please note that this list is protected and read-only! You can only get the data from the list, you cannot push data into it.

Accessing the User List via CSOM

You can reach the User Information List as a normal SharePoint list with the following connection string:

​Url=http://<mySharePointSite>/; List=User Information List; Authentication=XXX; user=XXXX; password=XXXX

Note that the "Url=;" parameter should be the base for your site, not including libraries. It can target subsite versions of the list, though there may be mixed results, depending on site permissions. As this is a hidden list, you may need administrator privileges on the SharePoint site to access it at all. ​

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Accessing the User List via OData​

You can also use SharePoint's OData web services to access the information and this also appears to be less restrictive than accessing it with CSOM. It uses the following connection string:

​​url=http://<mySharePointSite>/_vti_bin/listdata.svc; Collection=UserInformationList; Authentication=XXXX; user=XXXX; password=XXXX​

Authentication will be the same method you use normally for connecting to a SharePoint site.

Note that the collection name for this list is different based on regional settings of the SharePoint site. For example, the German name for this collection is "Benutzerinformationsliste". If you are unsure what the name is, you can load the base OData URI (http://<mySharePointSite>/_vti_bin/listdata.svc​) into a browser and the resulting XML.

Note that OData is case sensitive! UserInformationList is different than userinformationlist, so if you true to use the second one, it will not work.​​

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