Exporting Active Directory GPO settings to Excel using Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 4.0

Lately, I had to get all GPOs and settings from Active Directory, and it wasn’t as easy as I thought in the beginning, because I wanted to get excel files with all current settings for each GPO.

After trying different options, I ended up using Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 4.0 (SCM), and apart from different minor issues with specific GPOs (honestly, it seems SCM is not very mature right now), I can confirm it’s very easy to use, and results are not bad.

This is what I did:

1.Backing up all GPO settings

You can also do it, of course, with Powershell, but I used GPMC this time because it’s pretty straightforward:

I went to GPMC console, right click on ‘Group Policy Objects’, then ‘Back Up All’

Backing up GPO settings

choose destination

Process

2.Enabling Macros in Excel

Prior starting exporting GPOs, a bit risky for a while, but I had no option than enable all macros in Excel, so I went to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings, and “Enable all macros” Excel Trust Center

3.Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 4.0 (SCM):

Pre-requisites:

Download Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 4.0 (SCM)
Requirements to be installed:
- SQL Server database: SCM comes with SQL Server 2008 Express; if it detects SQL Server on the system, you can opt for using it
Other requirements, besidess this:
- .NET Framework 3.5
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x86

After installing, first opening took some time because of importing baselines

Import baselines