Creating new users in Active Directory is a fairly straight forward process. But often times it is easier to copy a user than create a new one. If you have a user that belongs to all the groups as you want a new user to be apart of, you can make life easy by making a copy of that user. To do that, you will need to remote into the domain controller with the domain administrator account or an account with administrator privileges.
Once you log on, go to start and then click on programs and choose Administrative Tools. Choose Active Directory Users and Groups. The best thing to do is to search for the user that you want to model the new user after. Before you do the search, go to view and chose Advanced Options. Then do a search. To do a search click on the search button at the top. It is the second to last button
In the next box, type in the name of the user that you want to use as the model. Make sure that Entire directory is selected.
Right click on the user and go to properties. Then click on the object tab. It will list what Organizational Unit that the user is in. Navigate to that user by using the folders on the left side of the screen, then right-click on the user and choose copy. A window will come up and you will need to type in the new users information.
After you complete this process, you will be asked to provide a password. By default, there are some password policies that you will want to maintain. Make sure that the password has at least one lower case, upper case and special case character. It has to be at least 8 characters long.
Once that completes, the new user has been completed and is ready to use, unless you would like to change group memberships, policies, etc.
Tags: Active Directory, copy a user