Use a field of a variable inside of a foreach in PowerShell

Question

So I have a list of Active Directory users:

$users = Get-AdUser -Filter {Enabled -eq "True"}

What I want to do is group them based on their description since you have 3 possible descriptions in the whole user list.

However: I can't even seem to even use the Descriptionfield inside of a foreach:

foreach ($user in $users)
{
    Write-Host $user.Name    
    Write-Host $user.Description
}

Their name shows but not their description.

Why is this?

Mark Wragg · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-07 07:25:21Z

4

Get-ADUser only returns specific properties by default. The description property is not one of these. To ensure it is returned you need to use the following parameter with Get-ADUser:

-Properties Description

"This cmdlet retrieves a default set of user object properties. To retrieve additional properties use the Properties parameter." - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ee617241.aspx

edited Apr 7, 2017 at 7:25

answered Apr 7, 2017 at 7:20

Mark Wragg

23.6k7 gold badges48 silver badges77 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

Kahn Kah Over a year ago

Thank you very much Mark, can I ask you where to see the default properties of each cmdlet?

Mark Wragg Over a year ago

I don't think it's well documented, but if you pipe your results to the get-member cmdlet then you will see all the objects properties and methods. For example get-aduser -filter * | get-member

Mark Wragg Over a year ago

Actually it looks like its documented for get-aduser here: social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/… . Also FYI you can get all properties returned by doing -properties *.

Kahn Kah Over a year ago

Thank you very much

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Use a field of a variable inside of a foreach in PowerShell

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related