PowerShell: Export Active Directory Group Members

by Robert Allen

In this guide, you will learn how to export AD group members to csv. I will show you how to get a list of groups and members with PowerShell and the AD Pro Toolkit. You can easily list group members with PowerShell but getting details for each user can be challenging. I’ll show you how to get a detailed group members report with the AD Pro Toolkit.

Step 1: Load the Active Directory Module

To connect and query an AD group with PowerShell the Active Directory module needs to be loaded.

The Active Directory module can be installed with the following methods:

  • RSAT tools installed
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 and above with the AD DS or AD LDS server roles

You can run the following command to see if you have installed.

Get-Module -ListAvailable
powershell module

As you can see, I don’t have the module installed.

If you already have the module loaded then jump to step 2, if not then follow these instructions.

To get the Active Directory module installed on my Windows 10 PC, I will need to download and install the RSAT tools.

With the RSAT tools installed, I run the Get-Module -ListAvailable command again

check powershell ad module

Now I have the module installed, let’s move on to step 2.

Step 2: Use Get-ADGroup to find the group name

If you already know the name of the group, then skip to step 3.

If you’re not sure what the group name is, you can issue the following PowerShell command to list all Active Directory groups.

Get-ADGroup -filter * | sort name | select name
get-adgroup powershell command list groups

Above, is a screenshot of some of the groups listed in my domain. I had an HR group but wasn’t sure of its complete name, I can see it’s HR full. I’ll use that group in step 3 to list out the members.

Step 3: Use Get-AdGroupMember to list group members

The following PowerShell command will list all members of my HR Full group.

Get-ADGroupMember -identity "HR Full"
get-adgroupmember powershell command

You can see the above command provides more details on the group members than I need.

We can filter out the results and just get the member name with this command.

Get-ADGroupMember -identity "HR Full" | select name
list only group members with powershell

Perfect, now I just need to export this to CSV.

Step 4: Export group members to CSV file with PowerShell

The last step is to export the results to a CSV file.

This is done by adding Export-csv to our above commands. The full command looks like this.

Get-ADGroupMember -identity "HR Full" | select name | Export-csv -path c:\it\filename.csv -Notypeinformation

Pretty easy right?

Easily Export AD Group Members with AD Pro Toolkit

Exporting group members to CSV with PowerShell can become a time consuming and complex process. With the AD Pro Toolkit this task is very easy, you can create detailed group member reports with the click of the button.

The AD Pro Toolkit includes an Active Directory reporting tool with over 200 built-in reports. This is a huge time saver and eliminates the need to constantly making changes to complex PowerShell scripts.

Use the attribute selector to add or remove details to the group members export.

Group members reports include:

  • domain
  • group type
  • group scope
  • User Account status (enabled or disabled)
  • User lastLogonTimestamp
  • User email
  • User department, job title, city, state, company, office, phone, manager
  • You can customize the report to include the details you need
  • Send email reports and include the group members csv export

How to Export AD Group Members with AD Pro Toolkit

Step 1. Download the AD Pro Toolkit

Download AD Pro Toolkit

Step 2. Open Group Members Report

Click on “Group Members Reports” and select “Group Members”.

ad group members report

Step 3. Select groups or path

By default, the tool will run for all groups in your domain. To select specific groups or an OU click the “Browse” button. In this example, I have selected two groups that I want to export its members.

select ad group or ou

Step 4. Add or Remove Attributes

You can display additional details for each member of the group. For example, if I need to show the mail, whenCreated and whenChanged for each group member I can add those to the report. Click the “Columns” button if you want to add or remove attributes for the group members.

Step 4. Click “Run” to preview the export

This will display the groups and the group members for what you have selected. It creates a preview of what you want to export.

Step 5. Export Group Members

Click the “Export” button to export the group members to CSV. You can also choose to export the list to excel or PDF.

export group members to csv

Group members CSV example

Export AD Group Members in a single row

I’ve had several requests to add a report that shows the group and the group members in a single row. This report is now included in the toolkit. Below is an example, you can see the group name in one column and then in the next column it lists all of the group members in a single row.

To run this report click on “Group Member Reports” and then Group Members (Single line).

Nested Groups and Members

To get a list of nested groups and members click the “Nested Groups report. This will list all groups that are members of another group. If the parent group has members, you can expand it to see the list.

nested group and members report

Export only Security Group Members

If you only want to export the members of a specific group type such as security, follow these steps.

  1. Run the group members report for all groups in your domain
  2. Next, click on the groupType column and select Security.
get security groups

Now the tool will only display security groups and the group members. Click the export button to export the report.

list of security groups

The toolkit includes over 200 reports that can be customized, scheduled and export. Below are some additional group and group member reports included.

  • Nested groups
  • Nested groups tree view
  • Groups with no members
  • Large groups
  • Group member count
  • User group membership
  • All security groups
  • All distribution groups
  • Recently modified groups
  • Recently created groups
Download Free Trial

Schedule Automatic Group Member Reports

With the AD Pro Toolkit, you can schedule email reports of group members. This will email you a list of groups and members on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

  1. Click on “Scheduler”.
  2. Click “Add”.
  3. Select “Reports” and give the task a name.
  4. Choose a schedule frequency and time.
  5. Select “Groups -> General” and then select “group members”.
  6. Select an OU or specific groups.
  7. For the Ouput options select “Email CSV” or “Save CSV”.

I hope this detailed guide helped you to export group members to csv. Exporting group members with PowerShell is pretty easy but can get complicated when trying to include additional user details. Next, you might also want to see our guide on how to export active directory users to csv.

Recommended Tools

  • AD Cleanup Tool - Find stale and inactive user and computer accounts in Active Directory. Export, disable, move or delete the stale accounts to increase security.
  • AD User Creation Tool - Bulk import or update Active Directory user accounts. Add users to groups, import into OUs, set multiple attributes and more.
  • NTFS Permissions Tool - Scan and audit NTFS folder permissions. See which users and groups have access to what.
  • AD Reporting Tool - Over 200 reports on users, computers, groups, OUs and more. Customize reports or create your own reports with the report builder.

131 thoughts on “PowerShell: Export Active Directory Group Members”

  1. Short and sweet, thanks!

    However, FOR NOOBS LIEK ME, in Step 4, it’s confusing that after “Export-csv -path” you got new empty line and then “C:OutputGroupmembers.csv -NoTypeInformation” which doesn’t work.

    Obviously, it should be all together and have a backslash “\” to be able to export to the C-drive root IF it works by other policies. IMO would be better to point the output file to the “C:\temp\filename.csv” which is probably more accessible.

    Reply

  2. This is one of the best explanations that I could find – Thanks!

    Would you know how to deal with a group with a large amount of members? My results are “The size limit for this request was exceeded”

    Reply

  5. Hi Robert,
    Thank you for your post. How do I export group members from a specific domain. When I ran the Get-AdGroupMember command, it gets it from a specific domain.

    Reply

  8. Hi Robert,
    Thank you for your post. How do I export group members from a specific domain. When I ran the Get-AdGroupMember command, it gets it from a different domain.

    Reply

  9. Hi Robert,

    The Commands are working, But I need to export the members from Multiple Groups. Is there any commands for that ?

    Reply

  15. This is Awesome.. Helped me a lot.

    I have two quick questions:
    1. How can I see Group name and Member name as output?
    2. How can I choose multiple groups?

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply

    • Good day ?, how to get 8000 members list from 1 AD group using cmdlet Get-AdGroupMember and export it to cvs file ?

      Thanks a lot and have a nice day ?

      Reply

  18. This is extremely handy especially for someone who is still learning Powershell. I wondered if this script could be configured to run in one domain and pull data from a group in another? You would have to be able to add ID and password from the other domain for it to work.

    Reply

  19. It was really useful. Thank you. Is there a possibility to add First name and Last name in the output from the AD group

    Reply

  20. very interesting/handy…
    I have a range of AD groups I want to list (eg all AD groups starting g_abcCouncil) how would I modify the filter command ?

    (I tried -filter g_abcCouncil* but got a parsing error, not supported)

    Reply

    • You want to list just the groups and sort them or the groups and members? This would get all groups and sort them get-adgroup -filter* | sort

      Reply

  22. Thank you so much for this! As a beginner, I wanted a quick way of getting the list of users from a specific group. I searched it for weeks and finally found this post! . With these commands, lot of hours will be saved.

    Reply

  31. Hello Robert,

    How do i get the list of member from group A, group B, i.e group B is not a sub group of group A
    and i don’t want to right separate command like this Get-AdGroupMember -identity “Group A” | select name.

    I Tried Get-AdGroupMember -identity “Group A” “Group B” | select name and i got error :/

    Thanks for the help.

    Reply

  47. Hello, Thank you for the post. But I get an error on Step 2: “get-adgroup : Unable to find a default server with Active Directory Web Services running.”

    Reply

    • Yulia,

      The Powershell Active Directory module uses AD Web services to manage and administer Active Directory. You will need to make sure your server is running AD web services. What version of server are you running?

      Reply

  50. I’m looking for a similar script to export to csv groups and members within groups:
    group1:member1….
    group1:member1…

    Reply

    • Hi Richard,

      Just add -Recursive at the end to include members of child groups

      Example

      Get-AdGroupMember -identity HR Full -Recursive

      Reply

      • Hi Robert,

        What if i have to get entire (All) groups in one excel?

        instead of a specific group, I need to have all my groups with their current users in it.

        Reply

          • You could try something like this:

            $groups = get-adgroup -filter *

            foreach ($group in $groups) {
            $naam = $group.name
            $members = Get-ADGroupMember -identity $group
            write-host “Group: $naam”
            write-host “————————————-”
            foreach ($member in $members) {
            $memnaam = $member.samaccountname
            write-host “$memnaam”
            }
            }

        • Here’s how I got it to work:

          $date=get-Date -Format “yyyyMMdd”
          $groupList=Get-ADGroup -filter * | sort name | select name
          write-Output “””ADGroupName””,””ADUserSAMAccountName””” | Out-File .\ADGroupMembership-$date.csv
          foreach ($group in $groupList) {
          $memberList=Get-ADGroupMember -Identity $group.name | Select SamAccountName
          foreach ($member in $memberList) {
          write-Output “””$($group.Name)””,””$($member.SamAccountName)””” | Out-File .\ADGroupMembership-$date.csv -Append
          }
          }

          Reply

      • Hi,

        I have problem with the bellow command:
        Get-ADGroupMember -identity “Bss_nbe” | select name
        it’s showing only domain users group members, but she is not listing contact members ( insite of the group we have users & contacts, this command show only users )

        Reply

    • I am trying to extract a list of users given a security group. I know that this is easily accomplished using:

      Get-AdGroupMember -identity “security group name” | select name | Export-csv -path C:\members.csv -NoTypeInformation

      But, what I am trying to do is perform this action given a .csv file of security groups. For example, I have 36 security groups that I would like to query for their respective members. Rather than run the above line 36 times in a row by manually inputing each security group, I would like to say: “Here, take this .csv file, iterate through it one by one and return the members of each group you see, then export all members sorted by each group when you reach the end of the file.

      Any ideas as to how to do this? I’ve tried using a foreach loop but I don’t think you can pass an array to the -identity parameter.

      Reply

      • Was the script ever confirmed for this? I have around 50 security groups and want to export all the data into 1 CSV file rather than editing the command 50 times per security group.

        Thanks

        Reply

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