How to export data from Active Directory using the free PowerGUI tool

Many visitors to this site are just looking for a free, or low cost tool powerguito 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.


PowerGUI is an interesting product. Built on top of Powershell, it provides an easy to use graphical user interface for managing Active Directory. It includes User,Computer,Group, and OU management functionality. While no knowledge of Powershell is needed to use the product, its functionality can be extended with custom Powershell scripts. A growing community of users is contributing Powershell script packages, called PowerPacks, to PowerGUI. PowerPacks are available for managing Exchange Server, Virtualization, Sharepoint, Reporting, and Networking.

To install PowerGUI, you must install Powershell, and Quest AD commandlets, which are free powershell commandlets for managing Active Directory. PowerGUI, Powershell, and Quest AD Commandlets downloads are available here. In the video below I find all users that have a  certain manager, select attributes I’m interested in, and then export the data to a .csv file. Many more video tutorials can be found on the PowerGUI website.

UPDATE: Check out Dmitry Sotnikov’s (the guy behind PowerGUI) comment on this post on his blog where he shows how to customize PowerGUI to include a direct reports link in the Actions pane.


Tags:

This entry was posted on September 12th, 2009 and is filed under Management, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.

 
« What the Active Directory Recycle Bin Does Not Do
Unimpressed with Active Directory Export »
 
 

2 Responses to “How to export data from Active Directory using the free PowerGUI tool”

  1. Gravatar of Adding Direct Reports action « Dmitry’s PowerBlog: PowerShell and beyond Adding Direct Reports action « Dmitry’s PowerBlog: PowerShell and beyond
    14. September 2009 at 10:34

    [...] Adding Direct Reports action Published September 14, 2009 AD , AD cmdlets , Active Directory , Blogosphere , PowerGUI , PowerShell , cmdlets Leave a Comment Here’s my quick addition to Kamran’s “How to export data from Active Directory using the free PowerGUI tool“: [...]

  2. Gravatar of Active Directory Management Tools Active Directory Management Tools
    6. December 2009 at 03:11

    [...] Active Directory Tools » How to export data from Active Directory … [...]

Leave a Reply