Copy Active Directory User Account with Powershell - powershell

Question

I'm building a script to create AD user account based from a CSV (nothing special so far ;o). One particular paramter I'd like to add is "copy from xxx" whereby the new account will be a copy from an existing account (just like the "copy account" option in the AD Console.
Can this be achieved? How?

Answer 1

This seems straightforward enough. Make a column in the CSV called "CopyFromAccount" or something.
Then, during the Import-CSV | Foreach loop throw an if / else statement in.
If ($_.CopyFromAccount -ne $null) {
... insert code to copy AD account here ...
}
Else {
... insert code to use other parameters on this line to create the account ...
}
There are several available examples on the internet for copying users in PowerShell. Here's an example using the Quest AD cmdlets: http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/copy-ad-accounts-with-powershell/
To use the New-ADUser cmdlet from Microsoft instead of Quest, check out the instance parameter. More information is available in Get-Help or at the following URL: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee617253.aspx
It "Specifies an instance of a user object to use as a template for a new user object."
And is used like so:
$userInstance = Get-ADUser -Identity "saraDavis"
New-ADUser -SAMAccountName "ellenAdams" -Instance $userInstance -DisplayName "EllenAdams"