-ErrorVariable only grabbing first error

PowerShell Help
1

Hello!

I am using Try/Catch with New-ADUser. I am intentionally breaking the add by giving a bad syntax for the -Path argument.

I have three objects being input to my script. They all three error. $error.count shows 3 errors when I run this script.

However, my error variable, which is set up like, -ErrorVariable ADFail, only shows the last occurrence instead of all three.

When I run $ADFail, I see a perfectly caught exception, but only for the last failure.

How can I get $ADFail to show all instances??

$newStaff | ForEach-Object {

Try { 

    if ($_.ElemOrSecOU -ne "NULL") {

        $path = "OU=$($_.LocationOU),OU=$($_.ElemOrSecOU),OU=$($_.CertOU),OU=User Accounts,DC=domain,DC=my"

    } Else {

        $path = "OU=$($_.abbrOtherOU),OU=$($_.CertOU),OU=User Accounts,DC=domain,DC=my" }

    New-ADUser  -Name ($_.FirstName + ' ' + $_.LastName) `
                -Surname $_.LastName `
                -DisplayName $_.DisplayName `
                -GivenName $_.FirstName `
                -EmailAddress $_.EmailAddress `
                -SamAccountName $_.UserLogonName `
                -UserPrincipalName ($_.UserLogonName + '@my.domain') `
                -Title ($_.WorkDuties) `
                -HomeDrive "H:" `
                -HomeDirectory ($_.HomeServer + '\HOME\' + $_.UserLogonName) `
                -Path $path `
                -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString "mypass" -AsPlainText -force) `
                -ChangePasswordAtLogon $true `
                -Enabled $true `  -ErrorVariable ADFail
                
    } Catch [Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADException] {$ADFail} 

    $AccountAddFail = $_.UserLogonName + ' ' + $ADFail

}

$ADFail looks like this…

PS C:\Windows\system32> $AccountAddFail
USERNAME1 System.Management.Automation.CmdletInvocationException: The object name has bad syntax —> Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADException: The object name has bad syntax —> System.ServiceModel.FaultException: Active Directory returned an error processing the operation.
— End of inner exception stack trace —

It should be…

USERNAME1 error
USERNAME2 error
USERNAME3 error

…right??

Any advice appreciated. Thank you!

2

think through the logic…

$AccountAddFail = $_.UserLogonName + ’ ’ + $ADFail
runs each time through the foreach loop where an error occurs

you are overwriting $AccountAddFail each time an error occurs.
you can try something like

$AccountAddFail = $AccountAddFail + $_.UserLogonName + ' ' + $ADFail

that probably won’t look pretty and you’ll probably want to insert some carriage returns… but that will allow you to get all of the errors in the foreach loop

this will introduce another complexity in that if you run this multiple times in a single session your variable will always contain all of the errors, so in the beginning of your script you probably want to do something like $AccountAddFail = “”

3

You just have to add the info to the variable, not setting it (basicly overwrites it)

$AccountAddFail += $_.UserLogonName + ’ ’ + $ADFail

Adding “`r” gives you a new line

4

Thank you. I will work on this and update when I make some progress.

5

Checking in to thank you again for you help, and to say that this looks so silly…but it was early days with ps for me. I have learned a lot and completely understand throwing exceptions from each iteration in a predefined array by using += in the catch.

Thanks again!