How to add or remove groups for multiple user accounts in Active Directory

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Objective

Managing group memberships individually can be time-consuming, especially during onboarding, access provisioning, organizational changes, or user offboarding. Using ADManager Plus, administrators can add multiple users to AD groups or remove them from groups in bulk by updating the memberOf attribute through a single CSV import, simplifying group membership management and access control.

Prerequisites

Before importing users, ensure that:

  • You must be logged in as an ADManager Plus administrator or a help desk technician with permissions to modify user group memberships.
  • A CSV file containing the required user and group information must be prepared before performing the bulk modification. Use the following LDAP attributes while preparing the CSV file:
    Purpose LDAP Attribute Value
    Specify the user sAMAccountName User's logon name, pre-Windows 2000
    Add user to groups memberOf Group names separated by commas
    Remove user from groups removememberOf Group names separated by commas

Steps to add or remove groups for multiple user accounts

  1. Navigate to Management > User Management > User Modification > Modify Bulk Users.
  2. Select the required domain.
  3. Click Import and upload the CSV file containing the user accounts and group membership information.
    Note:
    • In case you want to add or remove a user to or from multiple groups, you can add all group names together separated by commas
    • These attributes will be handy to create a CSV to add/remove user accounts from groups. You can check out the other attributes supported by ADManager Plus, here.
  4. Select the imported users and choose the memberOf or removememberOf attribute, depending on whether you want to add users to or remove users from groups.
  5. If required, click Advanced Options and specify how existing attribute values should be handled:
    • Append the new values to the existing values.
    • Replace the existing values with the new values.
  6. Click OK to save the advanced option settings.
  7. Click Update in AD to apply the changes.

Tips

  • Ensure that the group names in the CSV file exactly match the group names in AD.
  • Use the append option when adding new group memberships without removing existing ones.
  • Review the CSV file before importing it to avoid unintended group membership changes.