403 forbidden error when trying to add a sharepoint lookup or person or group field

Question

After creating a new list in SharePoint, I can add other types of fields, but not lookup fields or person or group fields.

When creating a new column... as soon as I change the column type radio to one of these two types of fields, I get a 403 forbidden error.

Any ideas why that might be happening? Is it a setting in Central Administration or something?

Answer 1

Who are you logged in as when you try to add the lookup fields or the person/group? I don't know which list you are trying to lookup, but does the user have enough permissions to view the user information list? When you access the site settings, can you view the people and groups and modify users?

Answer 2

It looks like the problem was that the SHAREPOINT\System account was gone.

We added it back in and then everything worked as expected.