Powershell Tip #123: Extract the CN (Common Name) from DN (Distinguished Name) in Active Directory

By Steve Renard | October 23, 2016

3 Comments

Tip: You can extract the CN (Common Name) from DN (Distinguished Name) in Active Directory.

For example, someone sent you one report with DN only and you need to extract the CN.

$distinguishedName = 'CN=SMITH John,OU=Managers,OU=EMEA,DC=contoso,DC=com'

# Solution 1
$distinguishedName -replace "(CN=)(.*?),.*",'$2'

# Solution 2
($distinguishedName -split ',*..=')[1]

$distinguishedName = 'CN=SMITH John,OU=Managers,OU=EMEA,DC=contoso,DC=com'

# Solution 1

$distinguishedName -replace "(CN=)(.*?),.*",'$2'

# Solution 2

($distinguishedName -split ',*..=')[1]

extract-the-cn-from-dn-powershell

3 thoughts on “Powershell Tip #123: Extract the CN (Common Name) from DN (Distinguished Name) in Active Directory”

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_nd345 April 12, 2018

+1, thanks, i like solution #2 for its logic

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3 thoughts on “Powershell Tip #123: Extract the CN (Common Name) from DN (Distinguished Name) in Active Directory”

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