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Transfer Group Policies One Domain to Another

How do I transfer a collection of group policy objects from one domain to another. Domains are not related in any way and never will be, but the group policy objects are a bunch of security settings that are not specific to user names, computer names or any other specific name. So they should easily transfer. I just can't find a way to do it, other than to manually rebuild them one at a time in the second domain.

Alex

Use powershell

$date = get-date -format M.d.yyyy 
New-Item -Path \\server\c$\Backup\GroupPolicies\$date -ItemType directory 
Backup-Gpo -All -Path \\server\c$\Backup\GroupPolicies\$date

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Then import them on the other side. Again powershell with Import-GPO

regards
Alex

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Alex

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David Cummings

ASKER

Ok. Thanks. It looks very promising.

And I am talking about the contents of the "Group Policy Objects" folder in Group Policy Management.

I have one worry, however, which I am sure you are aware of: the "scope" of the policies won't necessarily make sense in the new domain.

Alex

And I am talking about the contents of the "Group Policy Objects" folder in Group Policy Management.

Correct

I have one worry, however, which I am sure you are aware of: the "scope" of the policies won't necessarily make sense in the new domain.

And no, not by a long shot, you'll have to redo all the security, all the security filtering, all the delegation, all of it will have to be redone. There "may" be a way to do this by modifying the XML files, but i'd not like to bet on it.

Regards

Alex

Alex

However, it'll be quicker doing it this way than it would be creating all the GPO's from scratch.

David Cummings

ASKER

Thanks for this.