Hello and welcome to Active Directory Tools, a guide to software products available for Active Directory. We hope you find a solution to your Active Directory software needs here.

I’m a fan of Softerra’s LDAP Administrator, which I have reviewed here, and finally got around to checking out their new web-based AD management application. Web-based AD managers leverage Active Directory to make it useful for all users in an organization. As a result, they are priced higher than desktop applications that are only used by IT Admins.
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Quest’s OnDemand Recovery Manager is the first Active Directory management tool built on Microsoft’s new Azure cloud platform. In this post, I review this interesting tool, and take a look at a technology that greatly simplifies integrating on-premise applications with the cloud, and which may lead to a new breed of Active Directory tools. 
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Windows 2003 introduced the feature of snapshots for backing up critical information from the Active Directory Domain Services using VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Services). The problem was that if the DC needed to be restored from snapshots multiple copies would have to be restored and compared to find the best copy. And DC restoration requires a reboot into Directory Restore Mode which could slow down or take down a domain until the Active Directory files were recovered. With Windows 2008 Server a new tool Dsamain.exe and a improved Ntdsutil .exe make the operation simpler and without requiring reboot.
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The EmpowerID product started out as a web- based self-service portal designed to reduce help-desk calls. It allowed users to update their own user information, like their phone number in Active Directory, to reset their own passwords, and also provided a customizable company phonebook. The Dot Net Factory, which makes EmpowerID, has since incorporated many features from Quest’s ActiveRoles Server and it has grown into a full-featured identity management solution.
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I was looking for an easy to use utility to export data from one test Active Directory domain to another test AD lab and came across Active Directory Export. It has an intuitive interface that lets you select OUs,Groups,Users to import or export.

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Many visitors to this site are just looking for a free, or low cost tool to help them with a simple task. In this post I step through a common task of exporting data from AD using the free PowerGUI tool, and I highly recommend testing this tool out to see if it suits your purposes.

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The new Active Directory Recycle Bin has a somewhat misleading name. Its not like the Windows Explorer Recycle Bin, and there are some things to consider before using this new feature.

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In this post, and in the video below, I look at Maxpowersoft’s AD reporting tool, and compare it to Jiji’s offering.
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Microsoft has renamed Identity Lifecycle Manager “2″ to Forefront Identity Manager 2010. In a quick 2 minute video below, I walk through editing user information, and creating a distribution list for a new project using its web-based console.

Have you ever been interrupted at work by a wrong number call from someone else within your compay?  Outlook’s  Global Address List (GAL) is handy for looking up phone numbers, addresses, titles, and other information, but can be difficult to keep up to date . As employees move, change phones, etc. somebody has to update Active Directory’s GAL. In an effort to improve the accuracy of their Active Directory and Exchange Global Address Lists many companies are turning to self-service update tools that allow users to update their own information.
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