A GPO search trick

In administering Active Directory Group Policy, you sometimes find that you need to find all GPOs that are configuring a specific setting. Here is a simple process you can follow to export all your GPOs, and then easily search within them to find all GPOs that are configuring a specific setting.

1. Export all the GPOs into individual HTML reports.
   • On a DC, make a folder called C:\GPOReports.
   • Run with PowerShell:

Get-GPO -all | foreach-object {Get-GPOReport -GUID $_.id -ReportType HTML -Path "C:\GPOReports\$($_.DisplayName).html"}

2. Use File Explorer to open the folder that has the exported GPO HTML reports.
3. Make sure File Explorer is searching the ‘File contents’ like in the following picture.

4. In File Explorer, search for text like “LOG ON AS A BATCH JOB” and the search will show each GPO that has that settings being used.
   • Special characters may cause the search to fail, so remove any special characters from your search.
5. Then you can use your browser to open the HTML GPO Report and see exactly where that setting is.