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  quot a positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument  quot firstname surname quot  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  quot ou Testing ou Users dc my dc domain quot  -Filter   -Properties   foreach   user in  users        Write-Host  quot Processing       user  quot       newname    null        Check first last name is set     if    user givenName -or   user Surname            Write-Host  quot    user  does not have first name or last name set  Please correct  skipping user  quot          continue       else            newname     quot    user givenName     user Surname  quot             Check if new username already exists         if  dsquery user -samid  newname                Write-Host  quot    user  requires altered username with initial  quot               if    user Initials                    Write-Host  quot    user  does not have any initials set  Please correct  skipping user  quot                  continue                             newname     quot    user givenName    user Initials     user Surname  quot                 Check if altered new username already exists             if  dsquery user -samid  newname                    Write-Host  quot    user  requires manual change  Please correct  skipping user  quot                  continue                                  try                Change UPN             Set-ADUser  user -userPrincipalName    newname              Change DN             Rename-ADObject -identity  user -Newname  newname           catch               Write-Host  quot Error when renaming    user   Error is       Exception Message   User requires manual change  Please correct  skipping user  quot              continue

User · Answer

In my case I had tried to make code more readable by putting:

"LONGTEXTSTRING " +
"LONGTEXTSTRING" +
"LONGTEXTSTRING"

Once I changed it to

LONGTEXTSTRING LONGTEXTSTRING LONGTEXTSTRING

Then it worked

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I had to use   powershell AddCommand  Get-ADPermission    powershell AddParameter  Identity    complete id path with OU in it      to get past this error

User · Answer

In my case there was a corrupted character in one of the named params   -StorageAccountName  for cmdlet  Get-AzureStorageKey   which showed as perfectly normal in my editor  SublimeText  but Windows Powershell couldn t parse it    To get to the bottom of it  I moved the offending lines from the error message into another  ps1 file  ran that  and the error now showed a botched character at the beginning of my  -StorageAccountName  parameter   Deleting the character  again which looks normal in the actual editor  and re-typing it fixes this issue

User · Answer

In my case it was the distinction between     En dash  and - Hyphen  as in  Add-Type    Path  quot C  Program Files Common Files microsoft shared Web Server Extensions 16 ISAPI Microsoft SharePoint Client dll quot   and  Add-Type -Path  quot C  Program Files Common Files microsoft shared Web Server Extensions 16 ISAPI Microsoft SharePoint Client dll quot   Dashes  Hyphens  and Minus signs oh my

User · Answer

I had this problem when trying to change directory  using the character    The solution was to use a string to change directories    C   gt  cd  my new dir

User · Answer

I had a similar challenge when writing a Powershell script to interact with AWS CLI using the AWS Powershell Tools I ran the command  Get-S3Bucket    List AWS S3 buckets  And then I got the error   Get-S3Bucket   A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument list  Here s how I fixed it  Get-S3Bucket does not accept    List AWS S3 buckets as an attribute  I had put it there as a comment  but it s not acceptable by the AWS CLI as a comment  AWS CLI rather sees it as a parameter  I had to do it this way   List AWS S3 buckets Get-S3Bucket  That s all  I hope this helps

User · Answer

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    lt  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      lt  GOOD

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

Examples related to powershell

Examples related to active-directory