Let’s say that you want search for an object, or several objects based on a specific property or parameter. For example, maybe you want to generate a list of devices or users that you have at a particular location. This can be achieved by using filtering. You are able to filter based off of any of the properties listed for you object. Using the example above, I can search for a list of computers in AD based off of the location property field:

Get-ADComputer -Filter {Location -eq 'MyLocation'} -Properties *

When you us the filter, you will place the filter between braces, like so: {Location -eq 'Location'}

Within the braces, you designate the property field that you want to search based on (Location) and then you set your argument to equal (-eq) your desired result: 'MyLocation’. The filter will search that property field to find Computers that have a matching location based on the text that you put in between the apostrophes.

You can Filter based off of any property field for that type of object, whether that be Description, Location, extended attributes, etc. Of course, your property fields may be different depending on your AD structure.

Using the example from above, let’s say that you would like to review a list of computers in the grid view filtered by location and generate a list that displays the computer name, Description, and location of each of those devices. That query would look like this:

Get-ADComputer -Filter {Location -eq 'MyLocation'} -Properties * |Select-Object CN,Description,Location| Out-GridView

You can also export these results to a text file or csv, like so:

Get-ADComputer -Filter {Location -eq 'MyLocation'} -Properties * |Select-Object CN,Description,Location| Out-File C:\Users\brad.terrill\Documents\OUTFILE.TXT

-OR-

Get-ADComputer -Filter {Location -eq 'MyLocation'} -Properties * |Select-Object CN,Description,Location| Export-Csv C:\Users\brad.terrill\Documents\Export.csv -NoTypeInformation

Remember that you can filter based on any property field for that object and collect any property field that you select to be displayed with your data. To learn more about property fields, review my previous article on Viewing Properties for an AD Object in PowerShell here.