How to Rename AD Group in PowerShell

This tutorial demonstrates how to rename an active directory group in PowerShell.

PowerShell Rename AD Group

Modifying the properties of the AD group is an easy operation using the PowerShell commands. We can use the Set-ADGroup command to modify the properties of an AD group which also includes renaming the group.

First, ensure the ActiveDirectory module is installed and imported into your environment. Follow the steps below to install the ActiveDirectory in your system.

Once the active directory is installed, we should run the following command to import the ActiveDirectory module.

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

Now to rename the ActiveDirectory group, we can use the get-adgroup, set-adgroup, and rename-adobject commands. Run the following command to rename the ADGroup:

get-adgroup -Identity 'OldGroupName' | % { set-adgroup -samaccountname 'NewGroupName'; $_ | rename-adobject -newname 'NewGroupName' }

The above command will successfully rename the ADGroup. Where the OldGroupName is the existing group name, and NewGroupName is the name to be changed, the get-adgroup command is used to identify the group, and the set-adgroup with samaccountname is used to rename the group.

One more important thing to mention here is that to run this command successfully, you need to have a default server for ActiveDirectory, which will run the active directory web services. If you don’t have a server installed, the web services will not work, and the above command will throw an error.