How do I use Set-ADuser with the -Instance parameter to update an attribute to blank? - powershell

Question

We've been using Powershell to bulk update our AD for several years with data from a CSV file. The code is pretty straight forward:
$Empinfo = Import-CSV AFile.csv
$EmpAD = Get-Aduser someone
$EmpAD.Title = $EmpInfo.Title
$EmpAD.streetAddress = $Empifo.street
$EmpAD.PostalCode = $Empifo.zip
<snip>
Set-ADUser -Instance $EmpAD
Recently, the street and zip info have been blanked for some people due to organizational weirdness. When we run the same script and try to set, say streetAdress to nothing, Set-ADuser throws a "replace" error.
(Note that I tried setting streetaddress to a single space and it still failed.)
After much trial and error, today I was able to make it work by testing for blankness and using the following:
if (Empinfo.street -eq $null) {
Set-ADUser $EmpAD -Clear streetaddress,postalCode
} else {
$EmpAD.streetAddress = $Locations[$site].street
$EmpAD.PostalCode = $Locations[$site].zip
}
In other words, we have to issue a specific -Clear action to accomplish this.
Is this how we should expect this to work? I cannot see anything in the -Instance parameter docs that says you cannot empty an attribute in the manner we were trying.

Answer 1

Yes , you have to use -Clear like how you have already done in the sample code in order to accomplish this. Thats the correct way to do that.
Empty field is actually holding the attribute value as Null.
So clearing that is important.