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How Do I...Modify Active Directory?


The Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI) accesses the capabilities of directory services from different network providers in a distributed computing environment to present a single set of directory service interfaces for managing network resources. Administrators and developers can use ADSI services to enumerate and manage the resources in a directory service, regardless of which network environment contains the resource. Use Active Directory to perform common administrative tasks, such as adding new users and managing printers throughout the distributed computing environment.

This sample illustrates how to change a value of a property of an Active Directory entry. It is a small console application that can be run from a command prompt. The application takes three command line arguments. The first argument must be a valid path to an active directory entry. The second argument is a property name of the entry. The third argument is the new value of the entry.
Try running the following command substituting the path and property name for a valid Active Directory path for your particular network: 
> ADWrite.exe "LDAP://DC=Microsoft,DC=COM" "name" "Microsoft"

In its simplest form, writing to the Active Directory involves:
  1. Creating a new DirectoryEntry:

    String adPath = ... ; DirectoryEntry objDirEnt=new DirectoryEntry(adPath); Dim adPath As String = ... Dim objDirEnt As DirectoryEntry = New DirectoryEntry(adPath) //adpath got from command line. DirectoryEntry* objDirEnt = new DirectoryEntry(adPath);

  2. Setting the DirectoryEntry object's properties:

    String propertyName = ... ; String newValue = ... ; objDirEnt.Properties[propertyName].Value = newValue; Dim propertyName As String = ... Dim newValue As String = ... objDirEnt.Properties(propertyName).Value = newValue //propertyName and newValue got from command line. (objDirEnt->Properties->get_Item(propertyName))->Value = newValue;

  3. Committing the changes to the Active Directory:

    objDirEnt.CommitChanges(); objDirEnt.CommitChanges() objDirEnt->CommitChanges();

Example