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I have an OU structure for computers that looks like this:

Workstations
  |--  Building
  |    |--  Floor, Department, or Approximate Location
...

I want to create a child OU called "3 North" in that building's OU, but I am getting the following error:

Windows cannot create the object 3 North because:
An attempt was made to add an object to the directory with a name that is already in use.

First of all, the OU name shouldn't matter; you can have multiple containers with the same name in AD as long they appear in different parts of the tree, but secondly, the only other "3 North" that exists is an email distribution list in an entirely different container.

Why is this error happening, and how can I get around it?

Wes Sayeed
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  • Do you have other trusted domains/forests that have objects with the same CNs? – Ryan Ries May 02 '16 at 23:53
  • We do have a secondary domain but they're not in a forest and the trust is only one-way from the main domain. Even so, that container most certainly wouldn't exist there. Could it still get hung up that way if it did exist? – Wes Sayeed May 03 '16 at 00:07
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    A domain without a forest? A secondary domain? What is that? If it's a child domain then it most certainly has a two-way, transitive trust with the parent domain. If you have a domain without a forest or a child domain without a two-way, transitive trust with the parent domain then you have a pretty interesting scenario. – joeqwerty May 03 '16 at 03:23
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    Interesting indeed. It's a side domain used by a medical device network that requires its own. There are only 16 workstations in it and the trust is used by a service account that feeds data to an interface server and also to back it up. – Wes Sayeed May 03 '16 at 04:21

2 Answers2

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I had a similar situation and was able to resolve the problem.

Inside an OU called 'apple' I was trying to make another OU 'crisp' but could not ("An attempt was made to add an object to the directory with a name that is already in use"). I had no other OU by the name of 'crisp'.

What I found was that I actually had a group (not an OU) named 'crisp' inside the OU named 'apple'. Once I moved the group named 'crisp' out of the OU named 'apple', I was then able to create the OU named 'crisp' inside the OU named 'apple'.

Dan Bentson
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You might have the same name somewhere inside the domain. Perform a full search, Make sure you check your contacts as well.

thomas herrera
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