The Get-ADUser cmdlet has an identity parameter however it requires a domain unique value to use, e.g. the samAccountname so something like:

Get-ADUser JSmith

would return one of the John Smith’s in your environment who had JSmith for the samAccountname, but wouldn’t return any other John Smith’s.

Get-ADUser ‘John Smith’

will fail to return any results (unless it matches a samAccountname value)

From the help these are the possible values for the Identity parameter:

-Identity []
Specifies an Active Directory user object by providing one of the following property values:
Distinguished Name
Example: CN=SaraDavis,OU=Europe,CN=Users,DC=corp,DC=contoso,DC=com
GUID (objectGUID)
Example: 599c3d2e-f72d-4d20-8a88-030d99495f20
Security Identifier (objectSid)
Example: S-1-5-21-3165297888-301567370-576410423-1103
SAM User Name (sAMUserName)
Example: saradavis
User Principal Name (userPrincipalName)
Example: SaraDavis@corp.contoso.com
Canonical Name (canonicalName)
Example: corp.contoso.com/Users/Europe/SaraDavis

However, you can carry out searches like this:

PS C:\Users\Jonathan> Get-ADUser -Filter {Name -like “*John*”}

The results will obviously be dependent on your naming convention.

Surname : Smith
Name : John Smith
UserPrincipalName : user1@springfield.local
GivenName : John
SamAccountName : user1
ObjectClass : user
SID : S-1-5-21-2833069418-2003798848-2456702638-1104
ObjectGUID : b09a8b44-3239-4d86-ada0-3d85c3865190
DistinguishedName : CN=John Smith,OU=Users,OU=Resources,DC=springfield,DC=local

Surname : Smith
Name : John D. Smith
UserPrincipalName : user2@springfield.local
GivenName : John
SamAccountName : user2
ObjectClass : user
SID : S-1-5-21-2833069418-2003798848-2456702638-1106
ObjectGUID : e2b810d7-b883-4a76-b7e9-433ad225addd
DistinguishedName : CN=John D. Smith,OU=Users,OU=Resources,DC=springfield,DC=local

Surname : Smith
Name : John X. Smith
UserPrincipalName : user3@springfield.local
GivenName : John
SamAccountName : user3
ObjectClass : user
SID : S-1-5-21-2833069418-2003798848-2456702638-1107
ObjectGUID : af8ac639-3645-4f86-ab20-966d8a4f1ab6
DistinguishedName : CN=John X. Smith,OU=Users,OU=Resources,DC=springfield,DC=local

Hope that helps

I must have a look at Windows 2008 R2 once I get a VM up.

In the mean time do the new Cmdlets make it easier to manipulate a search than Quest?

For example:

$oUser = get-qaduser -name ‘Smith, John’

Now I may have zero, one or many John Smiths and using Quest it is not that easy to write a If…else statement based on Count.

Paul