How to force the synchronization using AADSync. When using DirSync tool there is a PowerShell cmdlet to perform such task, however using the AADSync the process is slight different.

Solution

Using AADSync we have an utility called DirectorySyncClientCmd.exe and it can be found at C:Program FilesMicrosoft Azure AD SyncBin folder if you are using the default installation path.

To perform a regular synchronization, we can run the following command from the PowerShell command prompt:

.DirectorySyncClientCmd.exe

We can look into the Synchronization Service Manager to find out which profiles are running when ran the previous command.

Performing a Full Synchronization…

In some cases the administrator may want to force a full synchronization (after enabling filtering or based on Microsoft Support recommendations) and for that we need to use the initial switch on the same command, as shown in the figure below.

.DirectorySyncClientCmd.exe initial

When we use the initial parameter we can check that the Full Synchronization profiles are being used.

Conclusion

In this Tutorial we went over the DirectorySyncClientCmd.exe to force the synchronization between the on-premises Active Directory and Microsoft Azure Active Directory.

Written by Anderson Patricio

Anderson Patricio is a Canadian MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management, and Office Server and Services, besides the Microsoft Award he also holds a Solutions Master (MCSM) in Exchange and several other certifications. Anderson has been contributing to the Microsoft Community with articles, tutorials, blog posts, twitter, forums and book reviews. He is a regular contributor here at ITPROCentral.com, MSExchange.org, Techgenix.com and Anderson Patricio.org (Portuguese).