Browsing Mailbox Databases in Exchange 2007 and 2010

Comments

1. Scott K Swan says:

   September 28, 2010 at 4:59 am

   Tried your method to create a .csv for excel, but it does not work for me (Server-W2K8R2, Exch 2010 – Workstation-WinXP Pro SP3, Excel 2007). I even copied and pasted your line, changing only the database number and the drive to write the file to. Below is a partial of what I get. Strangely enough, it works when I display it. This would be a useful tool for one of my reports, if I can get it to work.

   #TYPE Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.FormatStartData
   ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd pageHeaderEntry pageFooterEntry autosizeInfo shapeInfo groupingEntry
   033ecb2bc07a4d43b5ef94ed5a35d280 Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.TableHeaderInfo
   9e210fe47d09416682b841769c78b8a3
   27c87ef9bbda4f709f6b4002fa4af63c
   27c87ef9bbda4f709f6b4002fa4af63c
   27c87ef9bbda4f709f6b4002fa4af63c <(followed by about 40 lines of that)

   Reply
   • Paul Cunningham says:

     September 28, 2010 at 9:49 pm

     Hi Scott, I can’t seem to replicate your error. Perhaps type out the command manually in case something is going awry in copy/paste?

     Reply
     • Scott K Swan says:

       October 1, 2010 at 1:56 am

       No luck. Tried it letter-by-letter and space-by-space, and I still get the same results when I open the csv file. Everything works, but the “export” part of it. I will just use the display listing and go from there. That is still a big help.

       Thanks for your time and assistance.

       Reply
     • Paul Cunningham says:

       October 2, 2010 at 8:02 pm

       Hi Scott, remove the format-table part of the command, it should work then.

       Get-MailboxDatabase “Mailbox Database 01″ | Get-MailboxStatistics | Sort totalitemsize -desc | Export-Csv C:\mailboxes.csv

       Reply
2. dan says:

   November 13, 2010 at 1:40 pm

   “As you can see although it may seem less intuitive than the previous method of browsing through a GUI the Exchange Management Shell actually makes it much simpler and easier to gather information about the mailboxes in your organization”
   You’ve got to be kidding? We’re now back in the 1980′s days of DOS, CPM and UNIX shell scripting. MS is not helping the everyday SMB sys admin, we’ve really got other things to do than figuring out cryptic scripts.
   Nice work on the actual tutorial, well written and informative, keep it up.

   Reply
   • Steve says:

     May 5, 2012 at 5:33 am

     “We’re now back in the 1980′s days of DOS, CPM and UNIX shell scripting. MS is not helping the everyday SMB sys admin”

     You mean they’re not doing anything for the system admin who hasn’t learned anything since the ’80s.. The truth is, if you’re running a mail server for 50 people, you’re right – you might not get as much bang for the buck in learning Powershell, and a GUI is more your style, but then again, those small companies are probably migrating to GMAIL or Office365 and hiring a college student to manage it with the web GUI… If you’ve got a large enterprise of 25000 mailboxes, and you are tired of having to point and click at everything all day, and want to automate the mundane tasks, you’ll be MUCH BETTER OFF if you spend a day or so learning EXACTLY those commands described in this post, and learn to leverage them. There are SO MANY things you can do, from automating mailbox moves, doing reports, etc. that you could NEVER do in the old GUI. Besides – Microsoft has given a HUGE opening for someone to come behind (see Quest tools) to write a GUI front end management tool that would far exceed what Microsoft would have written in the first place.

     Reply
3. Julian Milano says:

   February 9, 2011 at 2:19 pm

   I agree with Dan. What? Can’t the Exchange GUI run the Powershell commands here to create an easily accessible data output?

   I have to now store all my scripts in text files and recall them when I need them then I have to modify the scripts and see what result I get.

   I do love the 80s, but……………………

   Reply
   • Paul Cunningham says:

     February 9, 2011 at 9:29 pm

     Hi Julian, I’ve been running a lot of these scripts lately as I work on migration planning. Personally it doesn’t bother me, I like being able to kick off the script and find a nicely formatted CSV file at the end. I get it that not everyone sees it that way.

     The capability is probably there (though the exact steps are beyond me right now) to automate the process such that it collects this data on a scheduled basis and makes it available in a graphical report that you can look at when needed. I’m sure if you dug around some of the PowerShell dedicates blogs and websites you’d see some useful tips along those lines.

     Reply
     • Steve says:

       May 5, 2012 at 5:37 am

       Yep.. I’ve got 26000 users spread across 5 servers and 104 databases, and I get daily reports on user counts on each server, which servers are filling up, what mailboxes are new each day, how many users have excessive mail counts in the “critical” folders, when each database was last backed up, etc.. all through powershell, delivered to me in email daily. Powershell is AWESOME. You can even build GUIs in PS if you do need something interactive with pull-down menus and pushbuttons.

       Reply
4. Cyrys says:

   June 13, 2011 at 10:16 pm

   Very Great Script, it Worked Like Charm

   Reply
5. Richard says:

   July 22, 2011 at 7:23 am

   This works great! Worked the first time! I have different deparments on one database. After the export, I can sort by name, but I cannot get it to include the LDAP field “department”. This would help me GREATLY if I could export and sort by department to send out to the groups to clean up their mailboxes.

   THANKS!

   Reply
   • Paul Cunningham says:

     July 28, 2011 at 10:20 pm

     Sounds like you’ll need to knock up a script to combine the two pieces of data into one report

     Reply
6. johnson says:

   November 14, 2011 at 4:13 pm

   Very very understandable… Nice and good keep it up

   Reply
7. Faisal Khan says:

   June 26, 2012 at 9:21 pm

   all worked first time! Nice article.

   How can we reduce the result set of get-mailboxstatistics command as you did with get-mailbox command useing resultsize. i just want to get only top 30 users e.g. and i have noticed that resultsize does not work with get-mailboxstatistics command.

   Reply
   • Paul Cunningham says:

     June 27, 2012 at 10:24 pm

     Hi Faisal, I wrote an answer to your question here:

     http://exchangeserverpro.com/powershell-tip-get-list-top-exchange-server-mailboxes-size

     Hope that helps.

     Reply
     • Vignesh says:

       July 8, 2012 at 11:59 pm

       Hi Paul, Do you have a PS script to send this info as email?

       Thanks
       Vignesh

       Reply
     • Paul Cunningham says:

       July 9, 2012 at 9:00 pm

       There’s a short series of articles here that walks you through sending emails from scripts:

       http://exchangeserverpro.com/powershell-how-to-send-email

       Reply
8. Joe says:

   October 24, 2012 at 10:48 pm

   Paul, I noticed in your one PS command that the output showed GB, MB and bytes in () witout using any expressions. The best I am able to do is @{expression={$_.totalitemsize.value.ToMB()};label=”Size(MB)”} which would show MB rounded off (no decimal). How did you achieve this?

   Reply
   • Paul Cunningham says:

     October 25, 2012 at 9:51 am

     I did it using the command shown in the example. That is the standard output.

     Reply
9. DK says:

   April 13, 2013 at 4:07 am

   I get this error, can’t go any further

   PS C:\> Get-MailboxDatabase
   The term ‘Get-MailboxDatabase’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. C
   heck the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
   At line:1 char:20
   + Get-MailboxDatabase <<<<
   + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (Get-MailboxDatabase:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
   + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

   Reply
   • Paul Cunningham says:

     April 13, 2013 at 7:19 am

     Run it from the Exchange Management Shell.

     Reply
10. Mario Canchis says:

    May 6, 2013 at 1:25 pm

    Hei Paul

    I´ve got a few questions, which i would like to help me solving:

    Here windows 2k3 exc 2k7 sp1
    get-mailboxstatistics | ft displayname,lastlogontime,storagelimitstatus,servername,{$_.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB()}

    How can i add the PrimarySmtpAddress to be listed using the ps?
    Besides when export to a txt file; i get the short view, i mean dislpay name: Mario Can…. but not full field for any (storagelimitsstatus servername lastlogontime..etc)

    I would like to use “| Export-Csv c:\test.csv” using the command shown before does not work; but it does in the next command

    Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited |Select-Object DisplayName,ServerName,PrimarySmtpAddress, @{Name=“EmailAddresses”;Expression={$_.EmailAddresses |Where-Object {$_.PrefixString -ceq “smtp”} | ForEach-Object {$_.SmtpAddress}}} | Export-Csv c:\mailbox_alias1.csv

    Thanks for any advice you can give and specially for your time.

    Regards

    Reply

Leave a Comment Cancel reply