Introduction
Sometimes, when working with a vehicle or other types of records that are associated with a vehicle (accident record, work order, etc.) users will encounter an error message along the lines of "You must specify a driver that exists", preventing them from changing the vehicle status or otherwise saving the record that is related to the affected vehicle. This is an issue that comes up semi-frequently across support tickets.
The specific scenario that prompted the creation of this KB article was an equipment record that had its status changed to "Off Road" via work order, after which users could not change the status back without encountering the above error. Other instances where users encounter this error may not match this exact scenario but may be able to be resolved similarly.
Resolution
In the scenario described above, the equipment record was allocated to a driver who was later archived and deleted from the system. This causes the system to view the driver it was allocated to as an invalid driver that does not exist.
This can be fixed by closing the allocation record that is assigning the deleted driver to the vehicle, and then assigning the vehicle to another user, whether they be an actual user or a dummy account.
Note:
There can be more than one cause for this error. In past tickets, mismatches between the driver's name in the system and the driver's name on the allocation record, as well as invalid special characters, may have contributed to the issue, so these may also be worth looking into if there are no open allocation records for the affected vehicle.