Part 1. Managing Active Directory Data

This section of the book covers the fundamentals of managing your Active Directory data:

Chapter 1 starts the process by providing an overview of the book, along with required background information on Active Directory. Don’t worry; this is a practical book, and the theory will be kept to a minimum.

Chapter 2 starts you on this process by showing how to create user accounts. Creating 1 user account is straightforward, but how do you create 100 in a batch? The answer is in chapter 2. When your user accounts have been created, you have to start managing them—modifying and even deleting properties. Chapter 3 provides the processes and information to perform these tasks.

Users are put into groups to make the management of permissions easier and more efficient. You’ll learn how to create the different types of groups in chapter 4. This chapter also contains information on managing groups, especially group membership.

Chapter 5 discusses troubleshooting users and groups. What are the major problems you’ll see when managing users and groups? How do you overcome them? This chapter has the answers.

Computer accounts usually create less work than users and groups, but you do need to know how to create them, as shown in chapter 6. There’s also a section on troubleshooting computer account-related issues.