Start the User Profile Synchronization Service in SharePoint 2013

In this article I would like to share the procedure to start the User Profile Synchronization Service using Central Administration in SharePoint 2013.

What the User Profile and Synchronization Service Are

User Profile: It is a collection of SharePoint user properties. Features such as My Sites and People Search use user profiles to provide a rich, personalized experience for the users in your organization. You can create user profiles by importing data from directory services, such as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). You can augment user profiles by importing data from business systems, such as SAP or SQL Server. The process of importing profile data from external systems and writing data back to these systems is called Profile Synchronization.

User Profile Synchronization service: The User Profile Synchronization service is the core of the synchronization architecture in SharePoint Server 2013. When you start the User Profile Synchronization service on the synchronization server, SharePoint Server 2013 provisions a version of Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) to participate in synchronization. A User Profile service application can only have one User Profile Synchronization service. A User Profile Synchronization service is associated with connections and mappings.

Procedure to start the User Profile Synchronization service

Use the following procedure to start the User Profile Synchronization service using Central Administration.

Step 1: Go to the Central Administration using a Farm Administrator account as shown below.

central administration

Step 2: In Central Administration, click on “Application Management” from the left navigation. Then you will be navigated to the Application Management page as shown below.

Application Management

Step 3: On the Application Management page select the “Manage Services on server” under the Service Application section.

Manage Services on server

Step 4: When you click on the Manage services on server, you will be navigated to the “Services on Server” page, there you can find the user Profile Synchronization service as in the following:

Services on Server

Step 5: Then click on the Start in the user Profile Synchronization service and then provide the “password” for your account and give “Ok” to start the service.

synchronization service

Finally the service will be started successfully.

service will be started successfully
Summary

In this article we have explored how to start the user Profile Synchronization service in SharePoint 2013 using Central Administration.