How to Check AD Group Membership?

Active Directory security groups are used to grant users permissions to various domain services and resources. Therefore, to understand what permissions are assigned to a specific user in the AD domain, it is enough to look at the groups in which the user account is a member.

Getting Group Membership via ADUC

The easiest and most clear way to get a list of user groups in AD is to use the graphical snap-in Active Directory Users & Computers (ADUC).

1. Run the dsa.msc snap-in;
2. Right-click on the domain root and select Find;
3. Enter a username and click Find Now;
4. Open the user properties and go to the Member of tab;
5. This tab lists the groups the selected user is a member of.

Checking AD Group Membership via Command Line

You can also check Active Directory group membership through the command line. Run the command:

net user USERNAME /domain

As you can see, the command output contains the domain (Global Group memberships) and local groups (Local Group Memberships) of the user.

Using the following command, you can list the security groups that your account is a member of:

whoami /groups

List the members of the domain group:

Net group "CorpAPPUser" /DOMAIN

The main drawback of the methods described above is that the nested AD groups are not displayed (when the group is a member of other security groups).

You can display a full list of user groups (including nested ones) using the dsget tool. Instead of a username, you need to specify its distinguishedName:

dsget user "CN=Jon Brion,OU=Users,OU=UK,DC=theitbros,DC=com" -memberof –expand

If you need to get the members of a specific security group, including nested group membership, use the command:

dsget group "CN=NY-Managers,OU=Users,OU=NY,DC=theitbros,DC=com" –members -expand

When you need to do the opposite operation and display a list of groups in which the group belongs, run:

dsget group "CN=NY-Managers,OU=Users,OU=NY,DC=theitbros,DC=com" –memberof

-expand

You can display the members of a specific AD group using dsquery and net group commands:

dsquery group -name "AllowUSB" | dsget group -members

or:

net group "AllowUSB" /domain

How to List AD Group Members Using PowerShell?

You can also check user AD group membership using the PowerShell cmdlets: Get-AdUser, Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership, Get-ADGroup, and Get-ADGroupMember. You need the PowerShell Active Directory module installed on your computer to do this.

Tip. To use the AD PowerShell Module on Windows 10 or Windows 11 desktop devices, you need to install RSAT.

Import the Active Directory PowerShell module into the current session:

Import-module Activedirectory

You can use the Get-ADGroup or Get-ADGroupMember cmdlets to get a list of users in a group. For example, to find a group in a domain and display a list of users in it, you can use the command:

(Get-ADGroup -Filter {Name -like "*_AllowUSB"} -Properties Members | SELECT *).Members

The previous command will only return the DN (Distinguished Name) of users who are members of the group. If you need other attributes of the users in the group (for example, SID, SamAccountName, name, etc.), it’s better to use the Get-ADGroupMember cmdlet:

Get-ADGroup -Filter {Name -like "*_AllowUSB"} -Properties Members | Get-ADGroupMember

In the example above, we assumed you don’t know the exact name of the group you are looking for. If you know the group’s full name, you can immediately specify it as the Get-ADGroupMember parameter.

The Get-ADGroupMember cmdlet allows listing the members of an AD group (members can be users, groups, and computers).

Display only usernames that are added to the specific AD group (including nested groups):

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity AllowUSB -Recursive | ft name

Note. The -Recursive option allows you to display not only the account of users directly added to the AllowUSB group, but also the users of groups that are members of this group (child or nested group).

Display group members with detailed information on each member:

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity AllowUSB | foreach { Get-ADUser $_ -Properties * }

You can display only certain attributes of users in a group:

Get-ADGroupMember -Recursive “GroupName" | ForEach {Get-ADUser -filter {samaccountname -eq $_.SamAccountName} -Properties displayName, company, title, department } | Format-Table displayName,company,department,title –AutoSize

The following example will display the email addresses of all users of a specific security group:

Get-ADGroupMember -Recursive "UK_IT_DEPT" | ForEach { Get-ADUser -filter {samaccountname -eq $_.SamAccountName} -Properties mail } | Sort-Object mail | Format-Table mail

To count the number of users in an AD group, you need to use the PowerShell Count method:

(Get-ADGroupMember -Identity "Domain Admins").Count

Find empty groups in Active Directory (which do not contain any user):

Get-ADGroup -filter * | where {-Not ($_ | Get-ADGroupMember)} | Select Name

You can also use pipe with the Out-GridView cmdlet to conveniently sort and filter the list of group members. Out-GridView allows you to present any set of PowerShell data in a simple GUI. With the Add Criteria options, you can add different filters. To sort the table by any attribute, just click on the column name in the table header.

Get-ADGroupMember -Identity ca_AllowUSB | Select-Object name, objectClass,distinguishedName | Out-GridView

The list of Active Directory groups in which the user is a member can be displayed using the following commands:

Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership jbrion | Select name

or

Get-ADUser jbrion -Properties Memberof | Select -ExpandProperty memberOf

Hint. If you need to export the resulting list of groups or users to a text CSV file, add the following line to the end of any of the PowerShell commands discussed here:

| Export-Csv -NoTypeInformation .\ad_group.csv -Encoding UTF8

Another way to get a list of all members of a group (explicit or implicit) is to use the –RecursiveMatch operator:

Get-ADUser -Filter {MemberOf -RecursiveMatch "CN=NY-Sales,OU=Groups,OU=NY,DC=theitbros,dc=com"}

If we are interested only whether a certain user belongs to a certain group, we can proceed as follows:

Get-ADUser -Filter {MemberOf -RecursiveMatch "CN=NY-Sales,OU=Groups,OU=NY,DC=theitbros,dc=com"} -SearchBase "CN=User,OU=Users,OU=NY,DC=theitbros,DC=com"

You can use the filter by group name:

Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership jbrion | where {$_ -like "*allow*"} | Sort-Object | select -ExpandProperty name

You can use complex LDAP filters to get nested group membership. For instance, to get a full list of the groups to which a user account belongs (including nested groups), use the command:

Get-ADGroup –LDAPFilter (member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:=CN=John Brion,OU=Employees,OU=NY,DC=theitbros,DC=com)

The following PowerShell script template can be used to check a user’s membership in a specific Active Directory group and perform some actions depending on group membership (the group name must be specified between the * characters):

$group = “AllowUSB”

$user = “jbrion”

if ((Get-ADUser $user -Properties memberof).memberof -like “*$group*” )

{

# If the user is a member of a group

echo “True”

}

Else

{

# User not in the group

echo “False”

}

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Cyril Kardashevsky

I enjoy technology and developing websites. Since 2012 I'm running a few of my own websites, and share useful content on gadgets, PC administration and website promotion.

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