Change AD Display name from Lastname, Firstname to Firstname Lastname

ricardovand3rlinden

1/19/23, 7:48 PM

My organization wants to change the Display name format to Firstname Lastname instead of Lastname, Firstname

I already change the format for creating new users in the ADSI settings. But want to change all current users display name to Firstname Lastname

I found a script in: Default full name format in Active Directory

Get-ADUser -LDAPFilter "(&(objectCategory=person)(!displayName=*,*)(displayName=*))" |
ForEach-Object {  
    Set-ADUser $_ -DisplayName "$($_.Surname), $($_.givenName)"
}

This change it from Firstname Lastname to Lastname, Firstname. I want to do a reverse, so I tweak this script to:

Get-ADUser -LDAPFilter "(&(objectCategory=person)(!displayName=*,*)(displayName=*))" |
ForEach-Object {  
    Set-ADUser $_ -DisplayName "$($_.givenName) $($_.Surname)"
}

But my AD users have still a display name like Lastname, Firstname. PS do not give any warnings or errors and did a refresh in AD.

Do someone knows a trick to change all AD users to Firstname Lastname as Displayname?

889

0 + 0

powershell

active-directory

Score:3

Server

Gerald Schneider

1/19/23, 8:23 PM

The problem is the filter. The string (!displayName=*,*) indicates that only user who currently don't have a , in their displayname should be changed. You want the inverse, so you need to remove the !.

Get-ADUser -LDAPFilter "(&(objectCategory=person)(displayName=*,*))" |
ForEach-Object {  
    Set-ADUser $_ -DisplayName "$($_.givenName) $($_.Surname)"
}

0 + 0

ricardovand3rlinden

1/20/23, 6:05 AM

It works! Thank you =] I also notice that the wildcard gets deleted '(displayName=*)' from the filter. Why is that?

Gerald Schneider

1/20/23, 6:57 AM

Because it's redundant. `displayname=*` filters for all objects where the displayname is not empty. If it contains a `,` it is not empty, so it's no use to check that again.

ricardovand3rlinden

1/20/23, 8:46 AM

Thanks again, very helpful explanation.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Change AD Display name from Lastname, Firstname to Firstname Lastname

TH: เปลี่ยนชื่อที่แสดง AD จาก Lastname, Firstname เป็น Firstname Lastname

RO: Schimbați numele afișat AD din Nume, Prenume în Prenume Nume

RU: Измените отображаемое имя AD с фамилии, имени на имя, фамилию

VI: Thay đổi AD Display name từ Lastname, Firstname thành Firstname Lastname

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