Always getting 1500 member of distribution list using PowerShell

Question

I would like to get all members (mail address) of a certain distribution list. Currently I just recieve the first 1500 members. My Script looks like that:

$group = [ADSI]"LDAP://CN=distListOne,OU=Groups,DC=XYZ,DC=XYZ"
$group.member.count ##Always 1500 
foreach($member in $group.member)
{
    $filter = "LDAP://"+$member
    $user = [ADSI]$filter
    $user.properties.mail | out-file "C:\distrUser.txt" -append 
}

I know that there are more than 1500 users in the distribution list. I need anyhow to extend the maximum recieved groupmembers.

Answer 1

You need to change your code to use a DirectorySearcher approach, and check out the PageSize property of the DirectorySearcher

Setting that value to something (instead of leaving it 0) will start paged searching to allow AD to return more than 1500 members. It is recommended to set the PageSize to a sensible value like 500 or 1000 - if you set it too high (higher than the system limit of 1500), it will be ignored and won't work!

See some other blog posts on how to tackle this problem:

• Get more than 1500 members from an Active Directory group

• List Members of Large Group

Answer 2

When retrieving a large attribute you need to ask for the values in it in batches. This is often called "ranged retrieval" in directory speak. Nearly every well behaving MSFT LDAP API supports this, including ADSI... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms676302(v=vs.85).aspx

Answer 3

This will work quite nicely, requires the active directory module

(Get-ADGroup $Group -Properties members).members