How to filter out disabled user accounts in DDL recipient filter

I did create a few Dynamic Distribution Lists (DDLs) for a customer today. His request was to filter out disabled accounts.

If you google it, you will find something like this everywhere:

-not(userAccountControl -eq 'AccountDisabled, NormalAccount')Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

For some reason this was not working for me, even if I tried a few variations of this “switch”.

So I took a look on Microsoft documentation about DDLs (I was looking for -RecipientFilter option).

It’s explained what it is on a Microsoft website, but in this case the important part is:

Property is a filterable property. For filterable properties, see Filterable properties for the RecipientFilter parameter.

So, on that “Filterable properties..” website I searched for: UserAccountControl,
where the value of this property is:

For valid values, see the Remarks section in User-Account-Control attribute. You need to convert the hexadecimal values to decimal. Most of the text values won’t work as described (even if you remove ADS_UF and all underscores).

So, in order to get this working, I need to use a decimal value of UserAccountControl attribute from AD … right ? Right !

You can check the value in AD in Attributes of AD object (on some user account).

Possible values are:

Property Flag	Hex value	Decimal value
NORMAL_ACCOUNT	0x0200	512
Disabled Account	0x0202	514
Enabled, Password Not Required	0x0220	544
Disabled, Password Not Required	0x0222	546
Enabled, Password Doesn’t Expire	0x10200	66048
Disabled, Password Doesn’t Expire	0x10202	66050
Disabled, Password Doesn’t Expire & Not Required	0x10222	66082

All possible values for UserAccountControl:

Property Flag	Hex value	Decimal value
SCRIPT	0x0001	1
ACCOUNTDISABLE	0x0002	2
HOMEDIR_REQUIRED	0x0008	8
LOCKOUT	0x0010	16
PASSWD_NOTREQD	0x0020	32
PASSWD_CANT_CHANGE	0x0040	64
ENCRYPTED_TEXT_PWD_ALLOWED	0x0080	128
TEMP_DUPLICATE_ACCOUNT	0x0100	256
NORMAL_ACCOUNT	0x0200	512
Disabled Account	0x0202	514
Enabled, Password Not Required	0x0220	544
Disabled, Password Not Required	0x0222	546
INTERDOMAIN_TRUST_ACCOUNT	0x0800	2048
WORKSTATION_TRUST_ACCOUNT	0x1000	4096
SERVER_TRUST_ACCOUNT	0x2000	8192
DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWORD	0x10000	65536
Enabled, Password Doesn’t Expire	0x10200	66048
Disabled, Password Doesn’t Expire	0x10202	66050
Disabled, Password Doesn’t Expire & Not Required	0x10222	66082
MNS_LOGON_ACCOUNT	0x20000	131072
SMARTCARD_REQUIRED	0x40000	262144
Enabled, Smartcard Required	0x40200	262656
Disabled, Smartcard Required	0x40202	262658
Disabled, Smartcard Required, Password Not Required	0x40222	262690
Disabled, Smartcard Required, Password Doesn’t Expire	0x50202	328194
Disabled, Smartcard Required, Password Doesn’t Expire & Not Required	0x50222	328226
TRUSTED_FOR_DELEGATION	0x80000	524288
Domain controller	0x82000	532480
NOT_DELEGATED	0x100000	1048576
USE_DES_KEY_ONLY	0x200000	2097152
DONT_REQ_PREAUTH	0x400000	4194304
PASSWORD_EXPIRED	0x800000	8388608
TRUSTED_TO_AUTH_FOR_DELEGATION	0x1000000	16777216
PARTIAL_SECRETS_ACCOUNT	0x04000000	67108864

Property flag descriptions

• SCRIPT – The logon script will be run.
• ACCOUNTDISABLE – The user account is disabled.
• HOMEDIR_REQUIRED – The home folder is required.
• PASSWD_NOTREQD – No password is required.
• PASSWD_CANT_CHANGE – The user cannot change the password. This is a permission on the user’s object. For information about how to programmatically set this permission, visit the following Web site:http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa746398.aspx
• ENCRYPTED_TEXT_PASSWORD_ALLOWED – The user can send an encrypted password.
• TEMP_DUPLICATE_ACCOUNT – This is an account for users whose primary account is in another domain. This account provides user access to this domain, but not to any domain that trusts this domain. This is sometimes referred to as a local user account.
• NORMAL_ACCOUNT – This is a default account type that represents a typical user.
• INTERDOMAIN_TRUST_ACCOUNT – This is a permit to trust an account for a system domain that trusts other domains.
• WORKSTATION_TRUST_ACCOUNT – This is a computer account for a computer that is running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, or Windows 2000 Server and is a member of this domain.
• SERVER_TRUST_ACCOUNT – This is a computer account for a domain controller that is a member of this domain.
• DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWD – Represents the password, which should never expire on the account.
• MNS_LOGON_ACCOUNT – This is an MNS logon account.
• SMARTCARD_REQUIRED – When this flag is set, it forces the user to log on by using a smart card.
• TRUSTED_FOR_DELEGATION – When this flag is set, the service account (the user or computer account) under which a service runs is trusted for Kerberos delegation. Any such service can impersonate a client requesting the service. To enable a service for Kerberos delegation, you must set this flag on the userAccountControl property of the service account.
• NOT_DELEGATED – When this flag is set, the security context of the user is not delegated to a service even if the service account is set as trusted for Kerberos delegation.
• USE_DES_KEY_ONLY – (Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003) Restrict this principal to use only Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption types for keys.
• DONT_REQUIRE_PREAUTH – (Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003) This account does not require Kerberos pre-authentication for logging on.
• PASSWORD_EXPIRED – (Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003) The user’s password has expired.
• TRUSTED_TO_AUTH_FOR_DELEGATION – (Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003) The account is enabled for delegation. This is a security-sensitive setting. Accounts that have this option enabled should be tightly controlled. This setting lets a service that runs under the account assume a client’s identity and authenticate as that user to other remote servers on the network.
• PARTIAL_SECRETS_ACCOUNT – (Windows Server 2008/Windows Server 2008 R2) The account is a read-only domain controller (RODC). This is a security-sensitive setting. Removing this setting from an RODC compromises security on that server.

So as we have that information, the final “switch” will looks like this:

(UserAccountControl -eq '512') -or (UserAccountControl -eq '544') -or (UserAccountControl -eq '66048')Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

And whole basic cmdlet:

Set-DynamicDistributionGroup -identity “<Group Name>” -RecipientFilter {((Company -eq ‘NAME’) -and (RecipientType -eq ‘UserMailbox’) -and ((UserAccountControl -eq ‘512’) -or (UserAccountControl -eq ‘544’) -or (UserAccountControl -eq ‘66048’)))}

Note:
I include only enabled account in this “switch”. I do not exclude disabled accounts with ” -not ” switch, that’s because I tried that and it wasn’t working for me.