How to Disable and Enable AAD Connect Password Writeback using PowerShell
Written on February 1, 2017

Disabling AAD Connect Password Writeback is easy in both the GUI and Windows PowerShell. In a recent case I found myself troubleshooting AAD Connect where it was in a very broken state that meant the GUI was unavailable due to a pending upgrade:

As part of my troubleshooting, I determined that Password Writeback needed to be disabled. Unfortunately, the dialogue shown above is blocking, which means I was unable to switch it off using the regular GUI. In comes PowerShell:

Disable Password Sync

To disable AAD Connect Password Writeback using Windows PowerShell, run the following commands from a shell as administrator on your AAD Connect server:

Import-Module ADSync
$connector = (Get-ADSyncConnector | Where-Object {$_.Name -ilike "*AAD"}).Name
Get-ADSyncAADPasswordResetConfiguration -Connector $connector
Set-ADSyncAADPasswordResetConfiguration -Connector $connector -Enable:$false

Enable Password Sync

To enable AAD Connect Password Writeback using Windows Powershell, run the following commands from a shell as administrator on your AAD Connect server:

Import-Module ADSync
$connector = (Get-ADSyncConnector | Where-Object {$_.Name -ilike "*AAD"}).Name
Get-ADSyncAADPasswordResetConfiguration -Connector $connector
Set-ADSyncAADPasswordResetConfiguration -Connector $connector -Enable:$true 

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