If you're feeling a bit intimidated by Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft's promotion of VBScript as the scripting language of choice, join the club. I, like you, am working to improve my VBScript skills, but in the interim, life must go on and I regularly need to query AD for information. All is not lost for those of us who are VBScript-challenged. Microsoft has provided several tools that make this task easier for command-shell script writers, and third-party developers are also beginning to address this need. With these tools, you can capture AD data and manipulate it with the shell scripting techniques that I've been teaching in this newsletter for the past 4 years. Table A summarizes some command-line tools that will help you capture or modify AD information.