AD users and computers not updating names

[Guest]

Had this problem for years and starting to bother me. How come if you change
a display name in the user properties it never updates the view in AD users
and computers it always shows the old way. For users that were brought
forward from my nt4 domain years ago they just show as there user names even
thoughI have put the first and last name into their properites? Is there
anything to be done with this?

 

[Richard Mueller]

Had this problem for years and starting to bother me. How come if you
change
a display name in the user properties it never updates the view in AD
users
and computers it always shows the old way. For users that were brought
forward from my nt4 domain years ago they just show as there user names
even
thoughI have put the first and last name into their properites? Is there
anything to be done with this?

Hi,

All the "name" attributes used in AD get very confusing. In ADUC the column
labeled "Name" is actually the Relative Distinguished Name (RDN), which for
users is the value of the cn (Common Name) attribute. The field labeled
"First name" corresponds to the givenName attribute, "Last name" corresponds
to sn (for surname), and "Display name" is displayName. There is also an NT
name for the user, labeled "pre-Windows 2000 logon name" on the "Account"
tab of the user properties dialog. The method of creating (or upgrading NT
users) can make a difference in how these values are assigned. When you
create users in ADUC displayName and cn often match.

When you modify first, last, or display name, you do not modify the cn
attribute, so the field labeled "Name" is not changed. In fact, you must
rename the object to change cn. You can right click in ADUC to rename.

An alternative is to add another column (or columns) to ADUC. On the View
menu select "Choose Columns...". You might want to add "Display Name".

 

[Tim.Olsen]

Richard has it well described, but as to why your old NT4 accounts
look different, I suspect it has to do with the fact that they were
migrated not created via ADUC.

When you create a new account in ADUC, the display name is created for
you as you type in the first and last names. When you migrated the NT4
accounts the display name was probably not set to the first and last
name. It was probably set to the "SamAccountname"

If you want them all to be uniform, It's a fairly easy and usually
binenge task to loop through your accounts and set the "displayname"
attribute to a concat of "givenname" and "sn"