Find Active Directory user by Query
Windows Server 2003 administrators can’t live without the Active Directory Users and Computers tool. Here’s a quick look at the saved queries portion of the tool, which allows you to save and reuse lookups for different Active Directory (AD) objects. The ability to reuse queries can save time and speed up the process of locating objects within your AD environment.
The Active Directory Users and Computers tool is included in the AD implementation used by Windows Server 2003. The following steps will help in saving AD queries:
- Open Active Directory Users And Computers.
- Right-click the Saved Queries folder in the left pane of the window.
- Select New and choose Query.
- Enter a name and description for your saved query. (The description is optional, but it can help you remember what the query is looking for if you ever need to revisit the query definition.)
- Click the Define Query button, which will open the Common Queries window. (You’ll find that Microsoft has created a few predefined queries to assist you in finding certain objects. For this example, we will create our own query to find any users whose last names are similar to Wijaya.)
- In the Find box, select Users, Contacts, And Groups.
- Select the Advanced tab.
- Click the Field button, select User, and then select Last Name.
- For an operator in the center list box, select Is Like.
- Enter Wijaya or Wijay* in the final text box on the row and click Add.
- Click OK in the Define Query window to return to the New Query window. (In the New Query window, you can also choose to include sub containers. Selecting this will search in any child organizational units or container objects for things that meet the conditions of the query you created.)
- Click OK to close the New Query window and return to Active Directory Users And Computers.Your query will appear saved beneath Saved Queries in the left pane of the console. To execute the query, right-click it and choose Refresh. If you select the query without refreshing, the results from the last time you ran the query will appear.
This method does not circumvent or remove the need for Active Directory Users and Computers, but it may make it a little more useful. Remember that you can create truly custom queries for all of the AD object properties in your environment.
This way it can help to find what a network administrator need on active directory, with this feature we can find a specific query no need find one by one on your active directory just create the query as you need and the system will help you to find your needed. Find query is a special feature from active directory on windows server environment.
It’s very handy to populate the Windows Active Directory Description field for computer accounts. Organizationally, you may use the field as an indicator for the system’s role.
Even with a server nomenclature that is self-documenting, there may be times when you still need an additional piece of information to correctly identify a system when looking within Active Directory Users And Computers; the Description field is one way to address this need. Descriptions can include server creation date, the server it is replacing, a special note on the system’s configuration, or what domain roles are in use for domain controllers.
To determine which systems do not have the Description field populated, you can use a native query that can be run within Active Directory Users And Computers. Click Saved Queries, click New, and then select Query. In the definition of the New Query, click the Define Query button to select the criteria. Click the Computers tab and, in the Description field, select the Has No Value option, and press OK. Figure A shows the resulting configuration of the query definition.
You can select the organizational unit (OU) that the query is run against to return the results of the queries, and the query will search the OUs contained within the selected destination. Querying a specified OU is important because, if the computer accounts of workstations and laptops are queried, this data may be overwhelming and not very useful.
If you can get into the habit of populating the Active Directory Description field, it will aid in many tasks where the computer accounts information is used. Configurations where the computer accounts are browsed, assigned for permissions, or configured for monitoring solutions that report on the system information by the description field benefit from the Description field clearly describing the system’s role.
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