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Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I count the number of users in an Active Directory group?
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![\"Hey,](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/a-for-powertip.jpg\" "\\"Hey,")
![\"Script](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/ad.jpg\" "\\"Script")
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| \n Note<\/B>. Shouldn\u2019t someone talk to her about this erratic behavior? You bet they should. On the other hand, she\u2019s continually surrounded by a team of highly-trained commandos. You<\/I> go tell her she\u2019s acting crazy!<\/P><\/TD><\/TR><\/TBODY><\/TABLE>\n Needless to say, we will keep you informed as more information becomes available. In the meantime, we would like to show you a script that can count the number of users in an Active Directory group. And don\u2019t worry: this script comes with the Scripting Guys Certificate of Authenticity<\/B>, ensuring that it is a real<\/I> Scripting Guys script and not a fake.<\/P>\n If it doesn\u2019t say Scripting Guys on it, you don\u2019t know what\u2019s inside.<\/P>\n Here\u2019s the script:<\/P> i = 0<\/p>\n Set objDictionary = CreateObject(“Scripting.Dictionary”)<\/p>\n For Each strUser in objGroup.Member\n i = i + 1<\/p>\n Set objMember = GetObject(“LDAP:\/\/” & strUser)\n strType = objMember.Class<\/p>\n If Not objDictionary.Exists(strType) Then\n objDictionary.Add strType, “1”\n Else\n objDictionary.Item(strType) = objDictionary.Item(strType) + 1\n End If\nNext<\/p>\n Wscript.Echo “Total members in the group: ” & i\nWscript.Echo<\/p>\n For Each objType in objDictionary\n Wscript.Echo objType & “: ” & objDictionary.Item(objType)\nNext\n<\/PRE>\n Two things we should note before we go much further. First, the only way to determine the number of members in a group is to go ahead and count those members; ADSI doesn\u2019t have a Count property that can instantly return the number of items in a collection for us. (Or at least it doesn\u2019t have a Count property that actually works.)<\/P>\n Second, we could have written a simpler version of this script, one that looks like this:<\/P> i = 0<\/p>\n For Each strUser in objGroup.Member\n i = i + 1\nNext<\/p>\n Wscript.Echo “Total members in the group: ” & i\nWscript.Echo\n<\/PRE>\n The preceding script does, indeed, echo back the number of members in a group. So why didn\u2019t we just give you that script and call it good? Well, in light of the controversy surrounding the doctored photo, we decided to go the extra step and echo back not only the number of members in a group, but also a tally of the type<\/I> of group member, like so:<\/P> group: 5\ncontact: 595\nuser: 240\n<\/PRE>\n That\u2019s just our way of trying to make amends for all the heartache and heartbreak that has no doubt accompanied the doctored photo scandal. Use whichever script best suits your needs, and with our compliments.<\/P>\n As for the original<\/I> script (the fancy one), that one kicks off by connecting to the group in question, in this case a group named Finance Employees, housed in the Finance OU of fabrikam.com:<\/P> After we make a connection to the group account in Active Directory, we set the value of a counter variable named i to 1; we\u2019ll use this variable to tally the number of members in the group. From there we then create an instance of the Scripting.Dictionary<\/B> object, the object we\u2019ll use to keep track of the different member types (like user, contact, and group):<\/P> That brings us to this line of code:<\/P> As it turns out, Active Directory groups all have a multi-valued property named Member<\/B>; this property contains a collection of all the members of that group. In order to get at the group membership all we have to do is set up a For Each loop to loop through all the values stored in the Member property.<\/P>\n Which, coincidentally enough, is exactly what we did in our script.<\/P>\n Inside the loop the first thing we do is increment the value of our counter variable. Each time we go through the loop we increment the value of i. Why? Well, suppose we have 37 members in the group. In that case, we\u2019re going to run through the loop 37 times; when we exit the loop, i will be equal to 37. Which, now that we think about it, means that i will thus be able to tell us how many members are in the group.<\/P>\n Was that lucky or what?<\/P>\n As you may or may not know, individual group members are listed in the Member attribute by distinguished name (e.g., CN= Ken Myer, OU=Finance, dc=fabrikam, dc=com). Is that useful? You bet it is; that means we can bind to the individual member account using the following line of code:<\/P> Why do we even want<\/I> to bind to the individual member account? Well, in addition to keeping a simple tally of the number of members in the group, we want to determine the member type; the only way to do that is to bind to the account and retrieve the value of the Class<\/B> property. That\u2019s what we do here:<\/P> At this point we know that the group member is a user (or a contact or a group or whatever). But now what? Well, as we noted, we\u2019re going to use our Dictionary object to keep a running tally of member types. With that in mind, our next step is to check and see whether this particular member type is already in the Dictionary:<\/P> Suppose the preceding line of code comes back True; that means the member type is not<\/I> in the Dictionary. (Notice the If Not<\/B> syntax.) In that case, we use the following line of code to add the type to the Dictionary and set the value of the new item to 1:<\/P> Got that? If not, you might want to take a look at the Microsoft Windows 2000 Scripting Guide<\/B><\/A> for a more detailed look at the Dictionary object.<\/P>\n But what if the member type can<\/I> be found in the Dictionary? That\u2019s fine; if the member type already exists in the Dictionary then we simply use this line of code to increment the item value by 1:<\/P> And then we loop around and repeat the process for the next member in the group.<\/P>\n After we\u2019ve looped through the entire group membership we echo back the total number of members in the group (represented by our counter variable i), followed by a blank line:<\/P> And then we set up a For Each loop to loop through all the items in the Dictionary, echoing back the member type and the item value:<\/P> And that, as you might expect, is that.<\/P>\n Oh, one more thing: if you\u2019d like to count the number of members in a local group, use this script instead:<\/P> i = 0<\/p>\n Set objGroup = GetObject(“WinNT:\/\/” & strComputer & “\/Administrators”)<\/p>\n For Each strMember in objGroup.Members\n i = i + 1\nNext<\/p>\n Wscript.Echo “Total members in the group: ” & i\n<\/PRE>\n We won\u2019t bother explaining how this script works, at least not today. But that\u2019s OK; we have other sources of information<\/B><\/A> that explain how to work with local groups.<\/P>\n |