The dreaded fat finger, accidental key strike, and copy/paste issues. Each of these situations, and more I am certain, can cause a space to be placed at the end of a word, sentence, etc. When creating user accounts in Active Directory these spaces can cause exhaustive issues that are hard to track down and laborious to remedy. What can you do to help yourself solve this “space” issue?
I often hear that automation will be the solution to this. PowerShell typically comes to mind. With the ability to do the heavy lifting for tasks such as creating user accounts, PowerShell seems to be the logical solution. However, when we are talking about an added space at the end of names listed in a CSV file, PowerShell is going to take exactly what it is given and simply use it to create the new user accounts. The end result will be user accounts, and the associated email address with a space appended to the end, as the CSV file instructed.
On the other hand, you can use a real user creation automation tool that has accounted for this issue with just a single check box. As you can see in Figure 1, ADManager Plus provides administrators with the luxury of automatically omitting unwanted spaces and dots.
Figure 1. Advanced configuration for user account naming.
You can not only create a single naming format, but many naming formats using ADManager Plus. Each naming format can quickly trim spaces and dots with this simple check box configuration. Now, you will have consistent user account and email names without having to track down errors.
If you want to try this feature for yourself for efficient user creation, you can download your own copy of ADManager Plus here.
