How to Get All the Ad Groups for a Particular User

How to get all groups that a user is a member of?

Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership will do this.

Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership username | select name

name
----
Domain Users
Domain Computers
Workstation Admins
Company Users
Company Developers
AutomatedProcessingTeam

How to get all the AD groups for a particular user?

Just query the "memberOf" property and iterate though the return, example:

            search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("memberOf");
            StringBuilder groupNames = new StringBuilder(); //stuff them in | delimited

                SearchResult result = search.FindOne();
                int propertyCount = result.Properties["memberOf"].Count;
                String dn;
                int equalsIndex, commaIndex;

                for (int propertyCounter = 0; propertyCounter < propertyCount;
                    propertyCounter++)
                {
                    dn = (String)result.Properties["memberOf"][propertyCounter];

                    equalsIndex = dn.IndexOf("=", 1);
                    commaIndex = dn.IndexOf(",", 1);
                    if (-1 == equalsIndex)
                    {
                        return null;
                    }
                    groupNames.Append(dn.Substring((equalsIndex + 1),
                                (commaIndex - equalsIndex) - 1));
                    groupNames.Append("|");
                }

            return groupNames.ToString();

This just stuffs the group names into the groupNames string, pipe delimited, but when you spin through you can do whatever you want with them

List all groups and their descriptions for a specific user in Active Directory using PowerShell

From Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership manual:

The Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership cmdlet returns a default set of ADGroup property values. To retrieve additional ADGroup properties pass the ADGroups objects produced by this cmdlet through the pipline to Get-ADGroup. Specify the additional properties required from the group objects by passing the -Properties parameter to Get-ADGroup.

So, let’s do it!

import-module activedirectory
$username = Read-Host 'Please enter Username!'
Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $username | Get-ADGroup -Properties * | select name, description

Also, in this case it should be enough to specify name,description instead of asterisk (*). If this is a performance issue, replace it. I am leaving it at asterisk because you might later change your mind about which properties you need.

How to get the groups of a user in Active Directory? (c#, asp.net)

If you're on .NET 3.5 or up, you can use the new System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement (S.DS.AM) namespace which makes this a lot easier than it used to be.

Read all about it here: Managing Directory Security Principals in the .NET Framework 3.5

Update: older MSDN magazine articles aren't online anymore, unfortunately - you'll need to download the CHM for the January 2008 MSDN magazine from Microsoft and read the article in there.

Basically, you need to have a "principal context" (typically your domain), a user principal, and then you get its groups very easily:

public List<GroupPrincipal> GetGroups(string userName)
{
   List<GroupPrincipal> result = new List<GroupPrincipal>();

   // establish domain context
   PrincipalContext yourDomain = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

   // find your user
   UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(yourDomain, userName);

   // if found - grab its groups
   if(user != null)
   {
      PrincipalSearchResult<Principal> groups = user.GetAuthorizationGroups();

      // iterate over all groups
      foreach(Principal p in groups)
      {
         // make sure to add only group principals
         if(p is GroupPrincipal)
         {
             result.Add((GroupPrincipal)p);
         }
      }
   }

   return result;
}

and that's all there is! You now have a result (a list) of authorization groups that user belongs to - iterate over them, print out their names or whatever you need to do.

Update: In order to access certain properties, which are not surfaced on the UserPrincipal object, you need to dig into the underlying DirectoryEntry:

public string GetDepartment(Principal principal)
{
    string result = string.Empty;

    DirectoryEntry de = (principal.GetUnderlyingObject() as DirectoryEntry);

    if (de != null)
    {
       if (de.Properties.Contains("department"))
       {
          result = de.Properties["department"][0].ToString();
       }
    }

    return result;
}

Update #2: seems shouldn't be too hard to put these two snippets of code together.... but ok - here it goes:

public string GetDepartment(string username)
{
    string result = string.Empty;

    // if you do repeated domain access, you might want to do this *once* outside this method, 
    // and pass it in as a second parameter!
    PrincipalContext yourDomain = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

    // find the user
    UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(yourDomain, username);

    // if user is found
    if(user != null)
    {
       // get DirectoryEntry underlying it
       DirectoryEntry de = (user.GetUnderlyingObject() as DirectoryEntry);

       if (de != null)
       {
          if (de.Properties.Contains("department"))
          {
             result = de.Properties["department"][0].ToString();
          }
       }
    }

    return result;
}

PowerShell Script to display all users part of AD security groups within an OU in AD

You can use Get-ADGroup -Filter * -SearchBase 'OUdnHere' to search for all groups under your desired Organizational Unit, then you can simply apply the same logic you already have:

1. Loop over the Groups
2. Get their memberships
3. Construct the output
4. Export to CSV

$ou = 'distinguished name of my OU here'
Get-ADGroup -Filter * -SearchBase $ou -Properties Description | ForEach-Object {
    foreach($member in Get-ADGroupMember $_) {
        [pscustomobject]@{
            SamAccountName = $member.SamAccountName
            Name           = $member.Name
            GroupName      = $_.Name
            Description    = $_.Description
        }
    }
} | Export-csv C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\Users.csv -NoTypeInformation 

How to get ALL AD user groups (recursively) with Powershell or other tools?

You can use the LDAP_MATCHING_RULE_IN_CHAIN:

Get-ADGroup -LDAPFilter "(member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:=CN=User,CN=USers,DC=x)"

You can use it anywahere that you can use an LDAP filter.

Example:

$username = 'myUsername'
$dn = (Get-ADUser $username).DistinguishedName
Get-ADGroup -LDAPFilter ("(member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:={0})" -f $dn) | select -expand Name | sort Name

Get all the parent AD groups a user belongs to

If you're on .NET 3.5 and up, you should check out the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement (S.DS.AM) namespace. Read all about it here:

• Managing Directory Security Principals in the .NET Framework 3.5
• MSDN docs on System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

Basically, you can define a domain context and easily find users and/or groups in AD:

// set up domain context
PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

// find a user
UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(ctx, "SomeUserName");

if(user != null)
{
   // get the "authorization groups" the user is a member of - recursively
   var authGroups = user.GetAuthorizationGroups();

   // iterate over groups
   foreach(Principal p in authGroups)
   {
      // do something with groups ....       
   }
}

The new S.DS.AM makes it really easy to play around with users and groups in AD!

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