Difference between using New-ADUser with hashtable and PSCustomObject

Question

I tried to automate creating AD users in my lab environment and came across an interesting issue that I cannot seem to grasp. When I tried using the following code, Powershell threw "New-ADUser : The name provided is not a properly formed account name"

$Attributes = @{
    Enabled = $true
    ChangePasswordAtLogon = $false
    Departent = "MyDepartment"
    UserPrincipalNAme = "[email protected]"
    City = "MySite"
    DisplayName = "My display name"
    EmailAddress = "[email protected]"
    GivenName = "First Name"
    Manager = "cbu"
    PasswordNeverExpires = $true
    SamAccountName = "abc123"
    Surname = "Last name"
    Title = "Title"
    Name = "abc123"
    AccountPassword = $("Thishere1234" | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force)
}

New-ADUser $Attributes

The above example is close to a copy paste from some post that I found using hashtables as a way to pass the information to New-ADUser. Since this did not work, I instead tried the following:

$Attributes = [pscustomobject]@{
    Enabled = $true
    ChangePasswordAtLogon = $false
    Departent = "MyDepartment"
    UserPrincipalNAme = "[email protected]"
    City = "MySite"
    DisplayName = "My display name"
    EmailAddress = "[email protected]"
    GivenName = "First Name"
    Manager = "cbu"
    PasswordNeverExpires = $true
    SamAccountName = "abc123"
    Surname = "Last name"
    Title = "Title"
    Name = "abc123"
    AccountPassword = $("Thishere1234" | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force)
}
$Attributes | New-ADUser

This works just fine. My question is: why would the first hashtable approach not accept the name property but the second PSCustomObject does accept the exact same approach?

As a bonus question, is there any particular reason I cannot use New-ADUser $Attributes but rather I have to pipe $Attributes to New-ADUser? I was under the impression you could use the former too?

Theo Theo · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-17T14:09:03

When splatting using a hashtable, you need to use the @ sign on the cmdlet, not a $:

New-ADUser @Attributes

Difference between using New-ADUser with hashtable and PSCustomObject

1 Answers