Searching Active Directory for usernames containing something using PowerShell

The Active Directory Users and Computers search / find function doesn’t allow you to search for partial user names.

For example in a school AD setup I wanted to find my test user but I’d forgotten which year I had put them in or what the beginning of the username was. The mmc would just fail to find anything. However “Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell” can do it using the following command.

PS N:\> Get-ADUser -Filter {SAMAccountName -like "*tuser*"}


DistinguishedName : CN=13TUser,OU=Intake2013,OU=Students,DC=school,DC=internal
Enabled           : True
GivenName         :
Name              : 13TUser
ObjectClass       : user
ObjectGUID        : 5f5d3aa3-9abd-4d38-9433-e035c570d30d
SamAccountName    : 13TUser
SID               : S-1-5-21-1322339111-3138716444-1658823465-1729
Surname           :
UserPrincipalName :

Neat.