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Can I modify the CN attribute of the users of an organization unit?

Active Directory expert Laura E. Hunter explains to a reader what must be done to change the default display specifiers for new users in Active Directory.

Laura Hunter
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Is it possible to modify the CN attribute of the users of an OU with a combination of its SN and given name attribute?

My problem is that users appear in Active Directory with "givenname sn" in the name column and I would like them...

to appear with "sn givenname". I have more than 1,200 users so I cannot rename them one by one.

Could you help me?

You can change the default display specifiers for new users going forward by using the steps listed in KB 250455 from Microsoft. For your existing users, you would need to use either VBScript or a command-line utility such as dsmove (used to rename users), ldifde, or ADMod to perform a bulk rename operation.
This was last published in October 2007

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