– You can filter by object class (User, Group, Organizational Role, etc.), by container, or by a custom LDAP filter. Without proper filters, neodsconvert.exe would happily export every schema entity, including system objects that would corrupt an AD import.
But Microsoft played the long game. AD integrated with Exchange, Group Policy, and eventually everything else. By 2005, thousands of organizations began the painful migration from NetWare to Windows Server. The problem? Exporting users, groups, organizational units, and custom schema from eDirectory to AD manually would take years. neodsconvert.exe
REM Step 2: Massage DN references (awkward manual step) REM Replace "o=acme" with "DC=acme,DC=com" in the LDIF REM Step 3: Import to AD ldifde -i -f staff_users.ldif -k – You can filter by object class (User,
(e.g., make it more technical or more casual) or include specific NeoDs Conversion Help 31 Dec 2008 — AD integrated with Exchange, Group Policy, and eventually
To understand why neodsconvert.exe exists, you need to recall the late 1990s and early 2000s. Novell NetWare was the king of file and print services. eDirectory (then NDS) was technically superior to Microsoft’s Active Directory in several ways: truly distributed, masterless multi-master replication, and a more flexible schema.
– The most common output is LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Format), which can be fed into ldifde or csvde on Windows. The MIF format (Metadirectory Interchange) was Novell’s own XML-like schema, intended for Identity Manager, but rarely used standalone.