Louis-Charles Gagnon

Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and SharePoint Blog

Azure AD Azure AD Connect - Force Delta and Initial Sync via Powershell

Azure AD Connect will integrate your on-premises directories with Azure Active Directory. This allows you to provide a common identity for your users for Office 365, Azure, and SaaS applications integrated with Azure AD.

Azure AD Connect is the best way to connect your on-premises directory with Azure AD and Office 365. This is a great time to upgrade to Azure AD Connect from Windows Azure Active Directory Sync (DirSync) or Azure AD Sync as these tools are now deprecated and will reach end of support on April 13, 2017.


With AAD Connect, we no longer have a scheduled task that runs every 3 hour. AAD Connect has a built-in scheduler, which by default performs a delta sync every 30 minutes.

Although a synchronization now runs every 30 minutes, there may be occasions, where you still want to force a sync. 

To do so, you launch Windows PowerShell (run as Administrator) on the respective server on which AAD Connect has been installed and type the following to import the AAD Connect PowerShell module:

Import-Module ADSync

To force a delta sync, use the following command: Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Delta

To force a initial sync, use the following command: Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Initial

To check scheduler settings , use the following command: Get-ADSyncScheduler


You can see sync issue on your Office 365 administrator page: