Creating and managing user accounts is a common Active Directory administration task. Windows PowerShell provides considerable flexibility in how this can be done in Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Typing Get-Command *ADUser at a Windows PowerShell prompt shows there are four cmdlets for managing user accounts.

• New-ADUser - Creates a new Active Directory user
• Get-ADUser - Gets one or more Active Directory users so that you can perform some action with them
• Set-ADUser - Modifies the properties of an existing Active Directory user
• Remove-ADUser - Removes the specified user from Active Directory

Import-Module

The Import-Module cmdlet adds one or more modules to the current session.

PS> Import-Module ActiveDirectory

New-ADUser

The New-ADUser cmdlet creates a new Active Directory user.

$path = 'OU=test,DC=domain,DC=local'
$name = 'Display Name'
$username = 'username'
$password = 'password'

$password = ConvertTo-SecureString $password -AsPlainText -force
New-ADUser -Path $path -SamAccountName $username -Name $name -AccountPassword $password -Enabled $true

Get-ADUser

The Get-ADUser cmdlet gets a user object or performs a search to retrieve multiple user objects.

$user = Get-ADUser 'username'

Set-ADUser

The Set-ADUser cmdlet modifies the properties of an Active Directory user.

Set-ADUser -Identity 'username' -Enabled $false

Remove-ADUser

The Remove-ADUser cmdlet removes an Active Directory user.

Remove-ADUser -Identity 'username'

New-ADGroup

The New-ADGroup cmdlet creates a new Active Directory group object.

$path = 'OU=test,DC=domain,DC=local'
New-ADGroup -Path $path -Name 'Group Name' -GroupScope Global

Remove-ADGroup

The Remove-ADGroup cmdlet removes an Active Directory group object.

Remove-ADGroup -Identity 'Group Name'

Add-ADGroupMember

The Add-ADGroupMember cmdlet adds one or more users, groups, service accounts, or computers as new members of an Active Directory group.

Add-ADGroupMember -Identity 'Group Name' -Members 'username'

Remove-ADGroupMember

The Add-ADGroupMember cmdlet adds one or more users, groups, service accounts, or computers as new members of an Active Directory group.

Add-ADGroupMember -Identity 'Group Name' -Members 'username'