Richard Siddaway's Blog

I had a question left on my blog about renaming all of the user accounts in an OU had their name changed to match the display name.  I started by creating a few dummy accounts:

PS s> Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=Test,DC=Sphinx,DC=org"  -Properties DisplayName | Format-Table DisplayName, Name -AutoSize

DisplayName Name
----------- ----
Green Fred  Fred Green
Green Jo    Jo Green
Green Dave  Dave Green

In the case of the first account the goal is to change the Name to match the display name.

One thing to be aware of with AD names – NEVER, NEVER, NEVER and I mean NEVER use a comma between the first and last parts of the name.

So

CN=Fred Green,OU=Test,DC=sphinx,DC=org

is good

CN=Green Fred,OU=Test,DC=sphinx,DC=org

is good

CN=Green, Fred,OU=Test,DC=sphinx,DC=org

is BAD, BAD, BAD.

The reason is that the comma is a delimiter between the parts of the distinguished name. LDAP doesn’t expect a comma between parts of an element so it errors.  You have to escape the comma so its treated as a literal character. I can guarantee that you will forget. Been there, done that & designed the T-Shirt.

Don’t use commas – its fair simpler and you’ll have less errors.

The only option to rename an object is to use Rename-ADObject

PS > Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=Test,DC=Sphinx,DC=org"  -Properties DisplayName | foreach {Rename-ADObject -Identity $_.DistinguishedName -NewName $_.Displayname -PassThru}

You’ll get a display showing the new names.

If you want to check run the original test

PS > Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=Test,DC=Sphinx,DC=org"  -Properties DisplayName | Format-Table DisplayName, Name -AutoSize

DisplayName Name
----------- ----
Green Fred  Green Fred
Green Jo    Green Jo
Green Dave  Green Dave

Job done