Question

I’ve got this code from a post here, which works perfectly:

Import-CSV $file | % {$myGroup | Add-ADGroupMember -Members $_.Alias}

The first line of my CSV file is “alias” and every other line is a username. This works great.

However when I modify the code to this:

Import-CSV $file | % {$myGroup | Add-ADGroupMember -Members $_.displayName}

And I modify the CSV file first line to “displayName” and every other line to a display name, it doesn’t work. I’m guessing this is because displayName is not a valid property for this code, so how can I modify this to use the display name of a user instead of the username?

Answer 1

That won’t work because DisplayName is not an accepted value. Here’s a list of valid values. See the cmdlet online help here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee617210.aspx

Members

Specifies a set of user, group, and computer objects in a
comma-separated list to add to a group. To identify each object, use
one of the following property values. Note: The identifier in
parentheses is the LDAP display name.

Distinguished Name 
Example: CN=SaraDavis,CN=Europe,CN=Users,DC=corp,DC=contoso,DC=com

GUID (objectGUID) 
Example: 599c3d2e-f72d-4d20-8a88-030d99495f20

Security Identifier (objectSid)
Example: S-1-5-21-3165297888-301567370-576410423-1103

SAM Account Name (sAMAccountName) 
Example: saradavis

In addition, the Members parameter accept a collection of values so you could also do this:

$members = Import-CSV $file | Foreach-Object {$_.Alias}
$myGroup | Add-ADGroupMember -Members $members