Powershell: A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument "xxx"

Question

I am trying to understand what this error actually means. So far a search of similar help requests for this error range from missing parameters, missing pipes, use of single or multi-lines, and also concatenation issues but none of the answers seem to give a definitive reason. So I assume the issue is code format (which makes it a lot harder to track down).

This is my script which I am writing to rename active directory users per target OU from whatever format they are now into a firstname.surname format.

I have created a test OU in AD with some users who will trigger errors and some that will not. However, the users that should not give me an error are giving me the "a positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument "firstname.surname"

I cannot see what is wrong with the script but hopefully, someone can give me some pointers.

Import-Module ActiveDirectory  $users = $null  $users = Get-ADUser -SearchBase "ou=Testing,ou=Users,dc=my,dc=domain" -Filter * -Properties * foreach ($user in $users) {     Write-Host "Processing... $($user)"     $newname = $null      # Check first/last name is set     if (!$user.givenName -or !$user.Surname) {         Write-Host "$($user) does not have first name or last name set. Please correct, skipping user."         continue     } else {         $newname = ("$($user.givenName).$($user.Surname)")          #Check if new username already exists         if (dsquery user -samid $newname) {             Write-Host "$($user) requires altered username with initial."              if (!$user.Initials) {                 Write-Host "$($user) does not have any initials set. Please correct, skipping user."                 continue             }              $newname = ("$($user.givenName)$($user.Initials).$($user.Surname)")              #Check if altered new username already exists             if (dsquery user -samid $newname) {                 Write-Host "$($user) requires manual change. Please correct, skipping user."                 continue             }         }          try {             #Change UPN             Set-ADUser $user -userPrincipalName = $newname             #Change DN             Rename-ADObject -identity $user -Newname $newname         } catch {             Write-Host "Error when renaming $($user). Error is: $($_.Exception.Message). User requires manual change. Please correct, skipping user."             continue         }     } } 

Answer 1

Cmdlets in powershell accept a bunch of arguments. When these arguments are defined you can define a position for each of them.

This allows you to call a cmdlet without specifying the parameter name. So for the following cmdlet the path attribute is define with a position of 0 allowing you to skip typing -Path when invoking it and as such both the following will work.

Get-Item -Path C:\temp\thing.txt Get-Item C:\temp\thing.txt 

However if you specify more arguments than there are positional parameters defined then you will get the error.

Get-Item C:\temp\thing.txt "*" 

As this cmdlet does not know how to accept the second positional parameter you get the error. You can fix this by telling it what the parameter is meant to be.

Get-Item C:\temp\thing.txt -Filter "*" 

I assume you are getting the error on the following line of code as it seems to be the only place you are not specifying the parameter names correctly, and maybe it is treating the = as a parameter and $username as another parameter.

Set-ADUser $user -userPrincipalName = $newname 

Try specifying the parameter name for $user and removing the =

Answer 2

I had this issue after converting my Write-Host cmdlets to Write-Information and I was missing quotes and parens around the parameters. The cmdlet signatures are evidently not the same.

Write-Host this is a good idea $here
Write-Information this is a good idea $here <=BAD

This is the cmdlet signature that corrected after spending 20-30 minutes digging down the function stack...

Write-Information ("this is a good idea $here") <=GOOD