Active Directory Bulk Editor

Ever need to change a single property of a whole set of user accounts.  I had to change the Home Drive letter assigned to over a 2000 accounts on a Windows 2003 Active Directory Domain recently.

I had 2 choices,  1.  Leave things as they were.  2.  Write a script that would process all user objects and make the required change.

Only having a few minutes to achieve my goal, I needed something that was already in existence that done exactly want I wanted.  However, putting a script together would have taken quite a bit of time.

With the help of a colleague, I was introduced to an application called ADModify.NET.  This powerful little tool, can open the Active Directory and display a list of Objects and apply any amount of changes as required.

I installed the tool onto the server and loaded it up.  The front page gave me options to Undo, Modify and do something else.  I choose the Modify option.  The dialog then allowed selecting the Active Directory and a Domain controller.  A sophisticated search then found Organisation Units and Users.  I was able to select the users I wanted to change.  On the next dialog, a Tabbed User account properties page was displayed (similar to the one used when viewing an account properties in Active Directory Users and Computers).  I put a tick next to the property I wanted to change, and then altered the choose the new value.  I then clicked the Apply button and crossed my fingers.

The tool make the required changes and reported that it had made the changes, but there were some errors.  The errors turned out to be unimportant.  But my user accounts had all been updated to the correct values with out any errors.

ADModify.NET saved me hours in coding and testing.  You can find out more about the tool by visiting http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=f5cbbfa9-e46b-4a7a-8ed8-3e44523f32e2

Well worth a look!