Thursday 3 March 2011

How to determine where an Active Directory object lives

Active Directory's Find… function is pretty handy: by searching from the directory root or any OU, you can search for specific objects by name, etc.

Unfortunately the search results display is a bit barebones and it's never obvious to a non-AD admin like me how to determine where the object actually lives in the hierarchy. Luckily you can drill into a search result item to view an object's properties but unless you're a real AD keener, you still might know how to find the object's location.

To rectify this situation, you'll need to turn on the Advanced Features setting from the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in's View menu:

Active Directory Advanced Features

The object properties display will now include an Object tab which contains the Canonical name of object field (in other words, the path to the object within the directory):

Active Directory Object Sheet

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9 comments:

  1. That was great! The simple answeres are so overlooked.

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  2. Thanks for posting; it's been driving me bat-shit insane for a good while now...

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  3. Thanks for posting this. I use "Find" every day and often find myself saying.. "Hmm I know its there now where do I find it?" I used to have to manually search it down but now just use "Object" tab.

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  4. Ditto Nevada Jack...thank you, thank you, thank you Michael Hanes!!!

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  5. What does is mean in case this field is grayed out - I do not have some admin rights?

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  6. I got exactly what i am looking for .

    Thanks :)

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  7. This is what i'm looking for. Thank you!!!!!!!!

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  8. Now we need a way to turn it on by default...

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