Adding Active Directory group with spaces in name gives error in PowerShell script

Question

I have following command to add AD group in PowerShell script but AD group has space in name and that is causing an issue.

Set-Variable -Name APP_GROUP -Value My AD Group
Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "MyDomain\"$APP_GROUP

Error: CategoryInfo: NotSpecified: RemoteException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandError

TessellatingHeckler · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-18 21:42:17Z

3

Quote it in single quotes, because it's a plain string with nothing else happening, and put the double quotes around the whole thing in the second line (double-quotes because it has a variable name in it which PowerShell needs to expand):

Set-Variable -Name APP_GROUP -Value 'My AD Group'
Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "MyDomain\$APP_GROUP"

It would be more typical to see it written:

$APP_GROUP = 'My AD Group'
Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "MyDomain\$APP_GROUP"

answered Jul 18, 2018 at 21:42

TessellatingHeckler

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5 Comments

Dharam Over a year ago

I can put SD group in quote because its coming from other script and I can not change that script

mklement0 Over a year ago

@DharmendraSingh: if the name (with embedded spaces) stored in $APP_GROUP comes from another script, you don't need to quote it again, but if want to make the value part of a single argument to pass to Add-LocalGroupMember, you must make $APP_GROUP part of the double-quoted string, as this answer shows. Alternatively, omit double quotes altogether (which works in this case, but may not always): MyDomain\$APP_GROUP. Also note that there is no obvious connection between your command and your error message, given that Add-LocalGroupMember is not a native command.

TessellatingHeckler Over a year ago

@DharmendraSingh I don't understand; the code in your question shows you tying the group name in; how do you get the group name out of the other script?

Dharam Over a year ago

@TessellatingHeckler I have one aws user data script which will create windows Ec2 instance and this script is part of user data and we are getting ad group name from variable teraform. example I have assigned ad group value in variable.sh file readonly APP_GROUP="My AD Group" and I get this value in UserData script like Set-Variable -Name APP_GROUP -Value My AD Group

TessellatingHeckler Over a year ago

I have not used teraform; that still is not clear to me, how does the text My AD Group get into the line Set-Variable -Name APP_GROUP -Value My AD Group in your script? Is teraform using your script as a template, and replacing part of it? If so, can you put quotes around where the value will appear like Set-Variable -Name APP_GROUP -Value 'TERAFORM_THING_HERE' ?

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