We'd need some details about how it's implemented to understand why.
Users are not like posts, where posts can have a draft status, for example, or individual post types can be registered so as to not be publicly queryable or searchable (essentially private).
If a user exists with some role then it should be possible to query those users (using the WordPress function get_users() or the underlying class WP_User_Query) based on their role.
Maybe the "pending" users are implemented some other way, not actually using roles?
Can you find documentation about these details or further information from Gravity support?
"Gravity Forms uses the WordPress core system for user registration, therefore pending users are stored the same way that WordPress does by default. Basically, rows in the WordPress core table wp_signups with a value of 0 for the "active" column are pending users."
The table "wp_signups" only occurs on multisite installations, it's not part of standalone WordPress sites.
I just registered a new test user using WordPress's own registration page and didn't activate the user, i.e. it is pending activation by following the link in the registration email to set up a password, that's as close as core WordPress has to a "pending" user.
The user gets added to the wp_users table (which is a core WP table), and is effectively identified as pending by the presence of a user_activation_key value.
If I create a View to display users with any role it will include this "pending" user in the results.
So, when adding users natively to standalone sites you can display them with a View.
Are you using multisite?
I would have to set up a multisite network to verify what happens in that case.
But a View to display users will only return users included in the wp_users table, so if users created with your GF registration form do not appear in the output of a user View that indicates GF is not populating the wp_users table with the pending users.
We asked Gravity forms for the example, this was their reply:
The WP_User_Query class does not support querying the signups table, in fact WordPress core does not include an API for it, they use custom queries in the few places they use it.
In the User Registration add-on we had to create our own custom queries to interact with that table. Check the get_pending_activations function in the plugins/gravityformsuserregistration/includes/class-gf-pending-activations.php file.
In which case, returning to your original question: is it possible to show pending users in VIEW results?
The answer is no, because a View to display users queries the wp_users table to find the users (based upon the standard WP_User_Query class). There is no way for such a query to return users stored somewhere else, because they are not in fact users, they are something else.
I was trying to think of a way to use the Views API to modify the query using the GF function their support directed you to, but it cannot work because the "users" are not users. I'm afraid in this case you will need an entirely bespoke solution. Perhaps Gravity Forms could help you with a custom shortcode to output such "users".
