Some of the other management tasks you may need to perform on user accounts aside from configuring account properties include moving accounts, disabling and renaming accounts as well as resetting passwords.

Moving an account between containers in the same domain can be done by right clicking the account and selecting the Move option. A window appears where you can select the container in which you want to move the account. If you want to move a user account (or other object such as a computer account) between domains you have to use the MOVETREE utility found in the Support\Tools directory.

If a user takes a leave of absence, you may want to disable to account to ensure it isn’t used for a period of time with the intention that the account will be needed again in the future. For example, if Bob takes a leave of absence for a period of two-months, you can temporarily disable his account by right clicking the account within Active Directory Users and Computers and click the Disable Account option. The user account will then appear with an X. When Bob returns the account can be enabled by selecting the Enable Account option.

Renaming an account is particularly useful when an existing position is filled by a new user. For example, if a member of your Sales department leaves the organization and is replaced by a new employee you could create a new account for the user and mirror the group membership and permissions as they were configured for the previous user. However, an easier way to provide the new user with the same access as the previous employee is to simply rename the old account to reflect the new user’s name. Doing so retains all the permissions, rights and group membership of the account so there is no need to configure them all again.

If you’ve ever worked as a network administrator, you have more than likely encountered a user that has forgotten their password (some of us probably run across this problem on a regular basis), especially when users are required to remember multiple passwords. In any case the solution to this it to reset the password. To perform the task, right click the user account and select the Reset Password option.