Read from Excel and import into Active Directory - powershell

Question

I have an Excel file which has two columns: 1st column(employees) and the second column (abbreviation).
The goal is to fill the initials in AD with the abbreviations oft he employees.
I think the PowerShell script should read the 1st column, check if the 1st column is the same as name in AD, then reads the employee's abbreviation and fill it in AD.
This is my first Powershell script and here is what I tried but of course it does not work:
$xl = New-Object -COM "Excel.Application"
$xl.Visible = $false
$wb = $xl.Workbooks.Open("C:\Users\user\Desktop\test.xlsx")
$ws = $wb.Sheets.Item(1)
for ($i = 2; $i -le 150) {
if ($ws.Cells.Item($i, 1).Value2 -ne $null) {
$Employees = $ws.Cells.Item($i, 1).Value2
$ abbreviation = $ws.Cells.Item($i, 2).Value2
write-host " Employees: "$ Employees
write-host " abbreviation: "$ abbreviation
}
$i++
}
get-aduser -Filter * -Properties initials | select name, initials
ForEach ($Employees in $name)
{
if ($Employees -eq $name)
{
#$Initials -eq $abbreviation
Set-ADUser -Initials $ abbreviation
}
}

Answer 1

If your just trying to update the initials with the abbreviation field from the file I would save the file as a CSV file initially and then do the following.
You can obviously add in more prompts and error checking along the way.
Get-Content test.csv | Select-Object -Skip 1 | ConvertFrom-Csv -Header Employees, abbreviation |
ForEach-Object {
Try
{
Get-ADUser $_.Employees | Set-ADUser -Initials $_.abbreviation
}
catch
{
Write-Host "Update Failed"
Write-Host "$Error[0]"
}
}
If there is no header in the file then you can drop the Select-object -skip 1
Or simpler
$Users = Import-Csv Test.csv
foreach ($User in $Users)
{
Get-ADUser $User.Employees | Set-ADUser -Initials $User.abbreviation
}

Answer 2

# This script reads Excel and update the Initials in AD
Import-Module ActiveDirectory;
$PathToXlsx = "C:\test.xlsx";
$xl = New-Object -COM "Excel.Application";
$xl.Visible = $false;
$wb = $xl.Workbooks.Open($PathToXlsx);
$ws = $wb.Sheets.Item(1);
for ($i = 2; $i -le 150;$i++) {
if ($ws.Cells.Item($i, 1).Value2 -ne $null) {
$Employee = $ws.Cells.Item($i, 1).Value2;
$Abbreviation = $ws.Cells.Item($i, 2).Value2;
Write-Host $Employee;
Write-Host $Abbreviation;
try
{Get-AdUser -Filter 'DisplayName -like $Employee' | Set-ADUser -Initials $Abbreviation;
$User = Get-AdUser -Filter 'DisplayName -like $Employee' -Properties 'Initials' | Select Name,Initials | Format-List;
Write-Host $User;
}
catch
{
Write-Host "Update Failed"
Write-Host "$Error[0]"
}
}
}
and in case of CSV.
Import-Module ActiveDirectory;
$PathTocsv = "C:\test.csv";
$Users = Import-Csv $PathTocsv -Delimiter ";";
foreach ($user in $Users){
$Employee = $user.Employee;
$Abbreviation = $user.Abbreviation;
Write-Host $Employee;
Write-Host $Abbreviation;
Get-AdUser -Filter 'DisplayName -like $Employee' | Set-AdUser -Initials $Abbreviation;
}