Bulk convert AD groups

With the advent of Windows PowerShell, performing bulk tasks just gets easier and easier. Consider a scenario where you have a bunch of Domain Local groups that you need to convert to Global…or any other type of conversion. This is a task that can take a large amount of time to complete manually, even with copious amounts of coffee and House of Cards on the TV. Fortunately, a few lines of PowerShell can make short work of this.

Consider the aforementioned Domain Local to Global conversion. As the astute reader will know, a Domain Local to Global conversion isn’t a one-step process. Each group must first be converted to Universal. Why this caveat exists is far too detailed to discuss here, but Microsoft have a pretty ok writeup of it here.

# Get all the groups in the OU we’re targeting

$groups = Get-ADGroup -Filter * -SearchBase “OU=File Shares,OU=Groups,DC=Contoso,DC=com”

# Recurse through each group
Foreach ($group in $groups) {

  # Make it universal
  $group | Set-ADGroup -GroupScope 2  

  # Make it global
  $group | Set-ADGroup -GroupScope 1
}