Copy AD User with PowerShell

Question

I have been shown the following example in a training course which I believe to be wrong.

The code is supposed to copy an Active Directory User in PowerShell:

$userInstance = Get-ADUser -Identity "kmill"

$userInstance = New-Object Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADUser

$userInstance.DisplayName = "Peter Piper"

New-ADUser -SAMAccountName "ppiper" -Instance $userInstance

It is my understnading that we get "Kmill"'s user account as an object and store it in a variable in Line 1.

It is also my understanding that in Line 2 - we completely Overwrite that variable and essentialy wipe all data obtained in line 1 (and therefore wouldn't copy an existing user)

Am I wrong here?

vonPryz · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-09 12:15:47Z

3

Your reasoning is correct, there is a mistake in the example. You can check this easily enough by printing the objects. No user creation is needed. Like so,

PS C:\> $u = Get-ADUser -identity someUser
PS C:\> $u # Print the variable contents on console
DistinguishedName : CN=someuser...
Enabled: True
...
PS C:\> $u = New-Object Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADUser
PS C:\> $u # Print again, all the properties are empty
GivenName          :
Surname            :
UserPrincipalName  :
PS C:\>

Technet has a sample that uses the -Identity to pass existing user's settings as template.

PS C:\> $userInstance = Get-ADUser -Identity "saraDavis"
PS C:\> New-ADUser -SAMAccountName "ellenAdams" -Instance $userInstance -DisplayName "EllenAdams"

answered Jan 9, 2018 at 12:15

vonPryz

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1 Comment

Fazer87 Over a year ago

Exactly as suspected - I tried $a.PropertyCount() which returned dozens of properties followed by 0 after new-object.

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