Are you a user?

I was trying to use the Remove-SPUser cmdlet and kept getting this error:

Remove-SPUser : You must specify a valid user object or user identity.

With claims based authentication the cmdlet Get-SPUser returns all users like this:

So, you can see the format of the –Identity (UserLogin) is something like this:

i:0#.w|DOMAIN\USERID

This thread referred to the Get-SPUser cmdlet and using New-SPClaimsPrincipal, but what I found was pretty simple.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/260ad45b-cfe7-4699-842b-fc2ecdf6e543/powershell-cant-getspuser-adfs-user?forum=sharepointgeneralprevious

Use this format for the cmdlet:

Remove-SPUser -identity "i:0#.w|cfgmgt\rwright" -web http://cmsp2013:5555

The trick for me was to put double quotes around the encoded user name.

Now, if the Microsoft documentation would be more accurate…