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

By powershellgu | October 23, 2016

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

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