Get-ADComputer -Filter Example

The PowerShell command Get-ADComputer is part of the Active Directory PowerShell module. Go to this article if you want to know how to install it.

To search effectively for computers in your Active Directory you should use the Filter switch. Don’t extract all computers and then search the result set.

Use Get-ADComputer -Filter to search directly for improved performance.

Understand the Get-ADComputer Filter Parameter

With the many various filtering options available (LDAP filtering, oData v3.0 filtering, etc.) the filter switch often causes some confusion.

The filter switch used in the Get-ADComputer command uses the PowerShell expression language in the query string.

This is different than e.g. when using the Get-AzureADUser command (which uses oData v3.0 filtering)!

The following operators should cover most of your needs:

Please notice the following in the above examples:

• Enclose the compared value(s) in apostrophes
• Use -like ‘*’ and -notlike ‘*’ to find empty or non-empty values 
• Filter “cryptic” date/time formats directly with a DateTime variable (like e.g. the LastLogonTimeStamp attribute which uses the FileTime format)

Below you have some code snippets that should point you in the right direction on how to structure your filters for your Get-ADComputer search queries: