Get Active Directory Groups – PowerShell

Get-ADGroup command in a Windows PowerShell is used to query a Domain Controller and return Active Directory group objects.

Particularly it can be used to get a list of all the Active Directory groups in the Domain Controller the computer is connected to.

To get the Active Directory groups using the Get-ADGroup command you need to have an “Active Directory Users and Computers” tool installed and you should be logged into a domain-joined computer as an Active Directory user with the relevant permission.

In this note i will show how to get the Active Directory groups using the Get-ADGroup command from the PowerShell.

Cool Tip: Find out what domain controller am i connected to! Read more →

Get Active Directory Groups

To get all the Active Directory groups in the domain the computer is connected to, use the PowerShell’s Get-ADGroup command as follows:

PS C:\> Get-ADGroup -Filter *

To get the Active Directory groups in another domain, add the Server parameter:

PS C:\> Get-ADGroup -Filter * -Server <domain>

To get the sorted list of the Active Directory group names only:

PS C:\> Get-ADGroup -Filter * | Select Name | Sort Name

Use the following construction to search for the Active Directory groups using the PowerShell’s grep equivalent, e.g. to get the Active Directory group names starting with “Adm“):

PS C:\> Get-ADGroup -Filter * | Select Name | Out-String -Stream | Select-String "^Adm.*"

To find a single group, use the Identity parameter, e.g. to check if an Active Directory group called ‘Administrators‘ exists, run the command below:

PS C:\> Get-ADGroup -Identity 'Administrators'

If you are getting an error as follows while trying to execute the commands above, you need to install the Active Directory Users and Computers on your computer:

Get-ADGroup : The term ‘Get-ADGroup’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

Cool Tip: How to get the members of an AD group in PowerShell! Read more →

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