Powershell command using list as variable

Question

I am trying to write a script to look at users and what AD groups they are part of, looking for a specific group that has multiple "sub groups". example VPN-GRP-ONE, VPN-GRP-TWO, VPN-GRP-THREE....

tried using some stuff I found on a few demos but its not working right as it wants the ActiveDirectory module imported to use get-aduser and we are not allowed to install new modules we dont already have. (I dont have ActiveDirectory in my available modules)

I was trying to use:

$list1 = C:\Users\MrAoxx\Documents\List1.txt
foreach ($_ in $list1) {
net user $_ /domain}

I was hoping for ouput that I could then take the next step to piping that to a new text file and begin stripping what I needed out of it to get just the AD group names I was looking for ie: ONE, TWO, THREE. But all its doing is opening the txt file and nothing else.

Answer 1

I see you have accepted an answer already, yet, here are other approaches to maybe ease this kind of effort for you. So, as for this ...

--- '(I dont have ActiveDirectory in my available modules)' ---

--- we are not allowed to install things ---

... and do you even need to actually install / enable them on your system to use them. This is what Implicit PSRemoting is for, and or using the built-in .Net namespace or adsisearcher.

How to us either of them:

Use PowerShell Active Directory Cmdlets Without Installing Any Software

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName dc1 –credential nwtraders\administrator
Set-Location c:\
Import-Module activedirectory

Powershell Remote Use of Module Commandlets (Remoting Import-Module)

# Create a Powershell remote session to a server with the #commandlets installed.
$Session = New-PSsession -Computername Server1

# Use the newly created remote Powershell session to send a #command to that session
Invoke-Command -Command {Import-Module ActiveDirectory} -Session $Session

# Use that session with the modules to add the available 
# commandlets to your existing Powershell command shell with a 
# new command name prefix.
Import-PSSession -Session $Session -Module ActiveDirectory -Prefix RM

Working with Active Directory using PowerShell ADSI adapter

# Searching for an object
$Searcher = New-Object DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher 
$Searcher.Filter = '(&(objectCategory=person)(anr=gusev))'
$Searcher.SearchRoot = 'LDAP://OU=Laptops,OU=Computers,DC=contoso,DC=com'
$Searcher.FindAll()

Answer 2

This wasn't fun but here you go - note that it is absolutely possible that long enough group names will get truncated:

Get-Content C:\Users\MrAoxx\Documents\List1.txt | Foreach-Object {
  $partOfGroups = ( ( net user $_ /domain | select-string '\*' | out-string ).Trim() -split "`r`n" ) |
    Foreach-Object { $_.Substring(29).Trim() -split '\*' } |
    Where-Object { -Not [String]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($_) }

  # You can look for specific groups in $partOfGroups if that user is part
  # of any particular group, and process for that user here.
}

I'll step you through how this works:

1. Get the net user output for the current user read from the file
2. Select all lines that contain a * and convert the output to a string, trimming leading and trailing spaces.
3. Re-split the output back into an array per line for ease of processing.
4. For each line of output, remove the first 29 characters and split the rest of the text by the * character.
5. Remove any empty strings from the final array output

This fancypants parsing is why you should opt for installing RSAT tools. Here's how you would do it with Get-ADUser :

Get-Content C:\Users\MrAoxx\Documents\List1.txt | Foreach-Object {
  $groups = ( ( Get-ADUser $_ -Property MemberOf ).MemberOf | Get-AdGroup ).Name

  # Process here
}

Answer 3

$list1 = get-content 'C:\Users\MrAoxx\Documents\List1.txt'
foreach ($_ in $list1) {
net user $_ /domain >> C:\Users\MrAoxx\Documents\FullList.txt} 

This worked the way I needed it to, thanks to @LotPings for the answer.