Preview the Active Directory export

4 min read Updated 4 November 2026

Before the connector runs — or whenever you want to check your settings are doing what you expect — the preview export shows the exact rows the Active Directory connector will produce for your school, built from the same logic the real export uses. Nothing here changes your AD; it's a read-only look at what would be sent.

There are two views of the same data, both under Active Directory in the sidebar (you need permission to view sync status):

Preview export (the page is called AD preview export) — the rows the connector will export.
Preview export issues (the page is called AD preview export — issues) — the accounts whose username is longer than 20 characters, the one thing AD can't take as given. Everything else about them is exported normally; the issues view just isolates them so you can see who is affected.

What you see

A table with one row per account, and a column for each field the export produces (username, OU, display name, and so on — driven by your AD settings and advanced mappings).
A count of the total rows produced.
A search box for finding one person in the export.
A Download CSV button for the complete export. It appears once Active Directory has a connector token, which switching Active Directory on under School settings → Sync services creates.
An AD status button back to the Status page.

Finding one person

The table shows 100 rows a page, and the pager at the bottom walks the whole export — every row the connector will produce is on the page somewhere, however big the school.

To jump straight to someone, type into the search box (Search username, email, name, OU or group). It matches on any column, so a username, an email address, a surname, an OU path or a group name all work, and the count beside it says N of M rows match (or M rows in this export with nothing typed).

If a search returns nothing the page says No matching rows — That user is not being exported — and that person is not in this export. The usual reasons are:

their status isn't ACTIVE (and no leavers OU path is set, so suspended accounts are left out);
they are a protected user and the school excludes protected staff or students;
they are named in the exclusions list, or belong to an excluded group;
staff or student processing is turned off for the school.

All of those live in AD settings.

If the preview is empty altogether it says Nothing to preview (The export produced no rows for this school and its current AD settings) — check that staff/student processing is turned on and the OU paths are set.

During the end-of-year pause this preview still shows the rows the export would contain, but the connector itself is told Active Directory sync is paused until the school resumes, so nothing in it is being sent. See The provisioning window and the freeze.

The 20-character username limit

Active Directory only supports 20 characters for a username (sAMAccountName). Longer usernames are trimmed to 20 characters by the AD Import app when the account is created, so the username in AD can differ from the one shown in the preview. The preview flags this for you: the username column is labelled (max 20), and any username already at the 20-character limit is marked with a scissors icon. In test mode, names that would pass AD's 20-character limit are shortened to 16 characters before _tst is added, so the suffix is never lost. To see the full list of accounts whose usernames are too long, open the issues view (the yellow note on Preview export has a Review affected users link to it).

Downloading the full export

Download CSV gives you the complete export as a file, exactly as the connector would build it — the same rows the page pages through, and a handy record to keep or diff against a previous run.

How to read the issues view

Open Active Directory → Preview export issues (or follow Review affected users from Preview export) to list every account whose username is over the 20-character sAMAccountName limit, with the same columns as the normal preview. These accounts are still exported — the AD Import app trims the username to 20 characters when it creates them — so the risk is a collision or a username nobody recognises, not a missing account. Shortening the username in the MIS is the durable fix.

The rest of the columns (OU, home folder, groups, scripts) are built with the same logic as the real export, so this view is also a quick way to check that one specific person's settings resolve the way you expect.

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