Using ADSI Edit to Edit Active Directory Attributes

ADSI Edit (AdsiEdit.msc) is a Microsoft Windows® Server tool that you can use to view and edit raw Active Directory® directory service attributes through the Active Directory Services Interfaces (ADSI) protocol. ADSI Edit is suitable for editing a single object or a small number of objects in Active Directory. ADSI Edit has no search facility. Therefore, you must know in advance the object that you are interested in and its location in Active Directory. Despite these drawbacks, ADSI Edit is a popular tool because it is easier to use than many other tools for making direct edits to Active Directory information.

ADSI Edit is implemented as a snap-in that runs in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). The name of the default console containing ADSI Edit is AdsiEdit.msc. You can add the snap-in to any .msc file through the Add/Remove Snap-in menu option in the MMC, or you can just open the AdsiEdit.msc file from Windows Explorer.

ADSI Edit will not run unless the adsiedit.dll file is registered. This registration will happen automatically if support tools are installed. However, if the support tool files are copied instead of installed, you must run the regsvr32 command on the adsiedit.dll before you run the adsiedit.msc snap-in.

For More Information

For more information about installing and using ADSI Edit, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 246926, "Folder Listing of the Support Tools Included in Windows 2000".

For more information about other methods you can use to enable, disable, and re-home mailboxes, see Using Active Directory Attributes to Enable, Disable, and Re-Home Mailboxes.