Compare-Object on two AD user accounts

Question

Can anyone please give some advice on comparing two ADAccount Objects in PowerShell (v2).

Whenever I run a comparison with Compare-Object, it only shows the difference in the Distinguished name, not the differences in the fields of those accounts.

Short of separately comparing $ADUser.Modified , or $ADUser.DisplayName , etc for every field I want to check, I'm at a loss.

Is there a way to compare each and every field in the ADUser object across the two accounts, showing which fields are different?

(If you are curious... this is actually for comparing two accounts with the same name, but in different domains)

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Based upon the previous answers I made a function to compare two AD Users.

As parameters you only have to give any valid value that would also be accepted by the -Identity parameter of Get-ADUser. (The function itself will query AD for the properties)

The -Property parameter can either be any valid AD/ldap property, or * for all properties.

Since the values of some attributed can be quite lenghty, I would advice to pipe the result in Format-List instead of the default table output.

The usage would be as following:

Compare-ADUser -ReferenceUser <user1> -DifferenceUser <user2>
Compare-ADUser -ReferenceUser <user1> -DifferenceUser <user2> -Property *
Compare-ADUser -ReferenceUser <user1> -DifferenceUser <user2> -Property "City","state","c"

.

Function Compare-ADUser {
    [cmdletbinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]

    Param(
        [parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$ReferenceUser,

        [parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$DifferenceUser,

        [parameter()]
        [string[]]$Property  
    )

    begin {}

    process {
        if ($pscmdlet.ShouldProcess("$ReferenceUser & $DifferenceUser", "Comparing users")) {
            $ReferenceUserSplat = @{ Identity  = $ReferenceUser }
            $DifferenceUserSplat = @{ Identity = $DifferenceUser }

            if ($PSBoundParameters.ContainsKey("Property")) {
                $ReferenceUserSplat.Properties  = $Property
                $DifferenceUserSplat.Properties = $Property
            }

            $ReferenceObject  = Get-ADUser @ReferenceUserSplat
            $DifferenceObject = Get-ADUser @DifferenceUserSplat

            $properties  =  $ReferenceObject.GetEnumerator() | % { $_.Key }
            $properties += $DifferenceObject.GetEnumerator() | % { $_.Key }

            foreach ($prop in $properties | Sort | Select -Unique ) {
                $ReferenceProperty = $ReferenceObject.($prop)
                $DifferenceProperty = $DifferenceObject.($prop)
                    
                try {
                    Remove-Variable comparison -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
                    $comparison = Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $ReferenceProperty -DifferenceObject $DifferenceProperty -IncludeEqual -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue            
                }
                catch {
                }
                finally {
                    if ( (($comparison.sideindicator -notcontains "<=") -and ($comparison.sideindicator -notcontains "=>")) -and -not
                            ($null -eq $ReferenceProperty -xor $null -eq $DifferenceProperty)) {
                        $comparison = "Equal"
                    }
                    else {
                        $comparison = "Different"
                    }
                }

                [pscustomobject]@{
                    Property = $prop
                    Comparison = $comparison
                    ReferenceUser = $ReferenceProperty
                    DifferenceUser = $DifferenceProperty
                }
            } 
        }
    }

    end {}   
}

Answer 2

This is a very great solution for comparing object properties:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/janesays/2017/04/25/compare-all-properties-of-two-objects-in-windows-powershell/

Jamie Nelson write a function to compare the properties of 2 AD objects.

So, with a little extra logic, we can do this pretty easily. First, we define the Compare-ObjectProperties function. That function will take any two source objects and get a unique list of all of the property names of both objects we're comparing. This is necessary because objects aren't always going to have the same set of attributes. When that is the case, we want to see where one has a null value and the other is populated. With the list of unique property names, our function can iteratively process them through Compare-Object and only return the properties that are different.

Function Compare-ObjectProperties {  
    Param(  
        [PSObject]$ReferenceObject,  
        [PSObject]$DifferenceObject   
    )  
    $objprops = $ReferenceObject | Get-Member -MemberType Property,NoteProperty | % Name    
    $objprops += $DifferenceObject | Get-Member -MemberType Property,NoteProperty | % Name  
    $objprops = $objprops | Sort | Select -Unique  
    $diffs = @()  
    foreach ($objprop in $objprops) {  
        $diff = Compare-Object $ReferenceObject $DifferenceObject -Property $objprop  
        if ($diff) {            
            $diffprops = @{  
                PropertyName=$objprop  
                RefValue=($diff | ? {$_.SideIndicator -eq '<='} | % $($objprop))  
                DiffValue=($diff | ? {$_.SideIndicator -eq '=>'} | % $($objprop))  
            }  
            $diffs += New-Object PSObject -Property $diffprops  
        }
    }         
    if ($diffs) {return ($diffs | Select PropertyName,RefValue,DiffValue)}     
}  

$ad1 = Get-ADUser amelia.mitchell -Properties *  
$ad2 = Get-ADUser carolyn.quinn -Properties *  
Compare-ObjectProperties $ad1 $ad2  

Answer 3

This should give you the property name, what each user had as that property and if it was equal or different.

$user1 = get-aduser Test.User1 -Properties *
$user2 = get-aduser Test.User2 -Properties *

$Usercomparison = @()

$user1.GetEnumerator() | ForEach-Object {
    If ($User2.($_.Key) -eq $_.Value)
    {
        $Comparison = 'Equal'
    }
    else
    {
        $Comparison = 'Different'
    }

    $UserObj = New-Object PSObject -Property ([ordered]@{
        Property = $_.Key
        User1 = $_.Value
        User2 = $User2.($_.Key)
        Comparison = $Comparison
    })
    $UserComparison += $UserObj
}

$UserComparison