Question

Find out which OU a machine/user is in

Asked by: bpeterm

Could someone tell me the best way of finding out which OU a user or computer is in? We've got lots of OU's and finding where objects belong can be a bit of a pain.
Thanks

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Asked On
2009-03-25 at 03:35:54ID24262546
Tags

OU query

Topics

Programming User Management

,

Active Directory

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
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Answers

 

by: slam69Posted on 2009-03-25 at 03:47:35ID: 23977796

if you enable
"advanced" view in ADUC, you can also see the OU of an object by looking at
the properties.

 

by: bpetermPosted on 2009-03-25 at 03:51:14ID: 23977818

Sorry what I meant was, if I need to find a user I can't unless I know the OU they are in. Is there a way of finding their OU so I can drill down and get to them that way.

Apologies for any confusion.

 

by: Raj-GTPosted on 2009-03-25 at 03:57:04ID: 23977869

I am not aware of any GUI based tools, but you can use always use dsquery command line to find the OU.

For users: dsquery user -name "Displayname"
For Computers: dsquery computer -name "Computername"

The best thing about using the command line is that you can also do wildcard searches.
Eg. dsquery user -name Jo* will display all account names beginning with Jo

Hope this helps.

 

by: slam69Posted on 2009-03-25 at 03:58:08ID: 23977874

just select the top level right click hit find and type the name shoudl find it for you in teh search box? then look at properties tab to lcate the ou they are in?

failing that you can use the script below

Const ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE = 2

Set objConnection = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Set objCommand =   CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
objConnection.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
objConnection.Open "Active Directory Provider"
Set objCommand.ActiveConnection = objConnection

FindUser = InputBox("Please Enter A UserName", "Find User OU")
If FindUser = "" Then
MsgBox("No UserName Was Added")
WScript.Quit
Else
strUser = FindUser
End If

objCommand.Properties("Page Size") = 1000
objCommand.Properties("Searchscope") = ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE

objCommand.CommandText = _
    "SELECT distinguishedName FROM 'LDAP://dc=yourdomain,dc=com'WHERE objectCategory='user'AND sAMAccountName='" & strUser & "'"
Set objRecordSet = objCommand.Execute

objRecordSet.MoveFirst
Do Until objRecordSet.EOF
    strDN = objRecordSet.Fields("distinguishedName").Value
    arrPath = Split(strDN, ",")
    intLength = Len(arrPath(1))
    intNameLength = intLength - 3
    Wscript.Echo "User :" & strUser & Right(arrPath(1), intNameLength)
    objRecordSet.MoveNext
Loop


from  http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1150931&page=1

 

by: Chris-DentPosted on 2009-03-25 at 04:00:24ID: 23977884


If you're using AD Users and Computers you have a few options:

1. Add the "Published At" column to the search

a. In AD Users and Computers
b. Open up the "Find" option.
c. Select View then Choose Columns
d. Add the Published At column

Now the search result box will include a full path to the account.

2. Use the Object properties

a. In AD Users and Computers
b. Select View, and Advanced Features (ticks it)
c. Find the User and open the properties
d. Check the Object tab under the "Canonical name of object"

There are programmatic methods too if you're doing things outside of AD Users and Computers.

HTH

Chris

 

by: Raj-GTPosted on 2009-03-25 at 04:01:45ID: 23977893

You can also do a quick search by right clicking in the domain name in ADUC and selecting Find. If you enable Advanced View like suggested above, you can view the OU location under Object tab of the user/computer properties dialogue.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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