PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue Does not work with Get-ADUser

Question

Im having issues getting -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue to work with cmdlet 'Get-ADUser'

This doesn't work, the error is displayed with or without -ErrorAction?

  get-aduser "JSmith" -ErrorVariable Err -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
  if ($Err){write-host "This is an error!!!!"}

This works (No error is display and silently continues, under the same conditions?

 get-childitem z: -ErrorVariable Err -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
 if ($Err){write-host "This is an error!!!!"}

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '14 at 22:49

21

The get is actually performed at the DC by the gateway service, and the error handling doesn't work quite the same. Fortunately Try/Catch does work:

Try { get-aduser "JSmith" } 
  Catch { write-host "This is an error!!!!" }

answered Apr 10 '14 at 22:49

mjolinor

1

FYI: Changing to just `catch [Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADIdentityNotFoundException] ` will ensure that only identity not found exceptions are caught. ps. I've written a proxy function to return null instead of throwing exceptions to avoid having to add try/catch blocks where this cmdlet's used frequently. Code's in a post here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37205808/powershell-proxy-function-adding-exception-handling (not great, but it does the job). – JohnLBevan May 13 '16 at 09:17
@JohnLBevan - you can also avoid it by using an explicit filter. – mjolinor May 13 '16 at 12:25
@mjolinor what is DC? – ameliapond Jun 19 '17 at 08:40
1

@ameliapond DC = domain controller – mjolinor Jun 19 '17 at 10:35

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 15 '16 at 19:59

11

What mjolinor is saying about the explicit filter is the following works:

$Sam = "JSmith"

$userObj = get-aduser -filter {SamAccountName -eq $Sam} -erroraction silentlycontinue

$userObj will be null if the user is not found. This allows the code to address the not found condition with out using the try/catch.

edited Jun 15 '16 at 19:59

answered Jun 15 '16 at 19:49

Garrett

2 Answers2