Office 365 Powershell issue with Set-UserPhoto for anyone other than myself

Question

I'm a global admin for our 365 environment and I'm having an issue with the Set-UserPhoto command in powershell. If I run it for my own username, it works just fine but if I run it using anyone else's username, it errors. Is there some kind of access I need to give myself to make this work? I'm a domain admin and global administrator in 365 so I should be able to do anything.

Connected through PowerShell 3.0 using the following:

$UserCredential = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/?proxyMethod=RPS -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session

Command I'm running:

Set-UserPhoto –Identity username -PictureData ([System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes("C:\userpics\username.jpg"))

Works fine for my username, for any other username I get this:

Error on proxy command 'Set-UserPhoto -Identity:'username' -PictureData: Tons of numbers here that scrolls for quite a while -Confirm:$False' to server BN3PR0201MB1027.namprd02.prod.outlook.com: Server version 15.01.0534.0000, Proxy method RPS: The WinRM client cannot process the request. The connection string should be of the form [://][:][/] where transport is one of "http" or "https". Transport, port and suffix are optional. The host may be a hostname or an IP address. For IPv6 addresses, enclose the address in brackets - e.g. "http://[1::2]:80/wsman". Change the connection string and try the request again. . + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Set-UserPhoto], CmdletProxyException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Exchange.Configuration.CmdletProxyException,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Reci pientTasks.SetUserPhoto + PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com

Solution

just ran into the exact same problem.

the solution was to run Microsoft Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell 'as administrator' (Elevated)

as seen here https://www.blackforce.co.uk/2016/09/23/set-userphoto-error-proxy-command

Comments

[Persistent13]

Is this the only command for Office 365 that you get the error for?

[Cole]

Haven't gotten any other error at all from any other command that I've had to do.

[Persistent13]

Long shot but, how many groups is the account you used apart of? This would include AD in you have on-prem sync enabled. support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3067263 may be the cause and I figure O365 support would have to assist you further if it is.

[Cole]

@Persistent13 That's probably it I bet, my domain admin account is a member of a ridiculous number of groups. I'll do some testing and post back to confirm if that was it or not. Thanks!

[Cole]

Made a new user which is only a member of Domain Users, gave this user global admin in 365 and tried the command again and got the same result. Seems the number of groups was not the cause.

[Preston Cooper]

All pictures must by 96 X 96 and less than 10KB

[Preston Cooper]

I wrote an article about importing staff photos into Office 365. questiondriven.com/2017/01/20/…