PeopleUpdate cannot update user data and shows error log message: “The attribute syntax specified to the directory service is invalid.” This only seems to occur for random users.

Issue Description
When you try to update a user’s information in PeopleUpdate, you receive an error message similar to the following:

“Could not update the entry data.”

The PeopleUpdate error log (WebADError.log) includes more detail about the error and shows the error below:
“The attribute syntax specified to the directory service is invalid.”

This is a known issue with PeopleUpdate releases including v3.4 SR #2 and prior. Subsequent releases fixed this behavior.

Issue Details 
PeopleUpdate sends the data you type into the edit form directly to Active Directory for update processing. In rare cases, edited data values might include blank spaces and these spaces get sent to Active Directory for updating along with other information. Unfortunately, Active Directory chokes when trying to update data values to blank spaces and emits the errors shown earlier in this message.

Solution 
You need to remove the space from the editable attribute that contains the space. To do this, look for all editable attributes with blank values on your edit page and then highlight the field contents to check for a space. If a space exists, delete it and then try the update operation again.

The best way to check for an empty space is to double-click the cursor in the first field on the top left and then tab through all fields and look for one with a highlighted space. The image below shows how this will look for the Work Phone field. Once you locate the space in the field or fields, just delete the space and update the account and things should work after that.