View mailbox size on Exchange 2010

     Before showing how to view the mailbox size I'd like to make a quick note about scripts. Powershell commands can be put into a powershell script. Place the commands into a text file and save the file type as a .ps1 file. If you click on a powershell script, it will simply open in notepad. If you try to run it from inside powershell it will fail too. In order to run a powershell script from inside powershell you must first change the permissions. Use the command below to allow custom written scripts and any signed scripts you may have downloaded. View the link for more options.

Set permissions to run powershell scripts

       Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

     The Get-MailboxStatistics command is used to display mailbox size. The instace displayed below shows the details for a single mailbox and displays the listed information for the mailbox in addition. 

 View mailbox Size:

Get-MailboxStatistics -identity username | ft DisplayName, TotalItemSize, ItemCount, StorageLimitStatus, Database

     This expounds on the previous command. If you place the following commands into a .PS1 script and run from inside powershell it will prompt you for the user name, display the size then ask if you would like to check another. A very simple example of how you can use scripts with these commands.

One User Script:

DO {

$name = read-host "Enter  username"

Get-MailboxStatistics -identity $name | ft DisplayName, TotalItemSize, ItemCount, StorageLimitStatus, Database

$ask = read-host "Check Another? (Y|N)"

}

WHILE ($ask -eq "Y")

     This command steps up from displaying a single mailbox to displaying every mailbox on the given server and sorts by mailbox size. This is followed by an example listing only the mailboxes for a given database. In addition you can limit the output to the first X number of results with the select-output command shown last. 

All Users 

Get-MailboxStatistics -server "mailserver1" | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | ft DisplayName, TotalItemSize, ItemCount, StorageLimitStatus, Database

Admin Database: 

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database "Admin" | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | ft DisplayName, TotalItemSize, ItemCount, StorageLimitStatus, Database

Top 10 mailboxes in the Admin Database my size: 

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database "Admin" | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | ft DisplayName, TotalItemSize, ItemCount, StorageLimitStatus, Database | Select-Object –first 10

Search for and delete email from one, many, or all mailboxes on Exchange 2010 SP1

      I recently had a situation needing me to remove a large email sent to all personnel. After spending some time online trying different commands and solutions, I finally put enough together to get it working. While there is a lot of documentation on how to perform this task, they either didn’t work for me or didn’t have all the information needed to make it work. As such, I’ve decided to put this together to show what worked for me and maybe save you some time.

     The first task is assigning permissions. If you try running the commands without first assigning permissions to your user you will see an error that the command or switch is not recognized. If you see an error of this nature double check your permissions. Permissions can be assigned to a specific user or to an existing exchange group.

Assign the following permissions to user or group:

new-managementroleassignment -role "support diagnostics" -user myuser

new-managementroleassignment -role "mailbox import export" -user myuser

You can view who has permissions to the desired roles with the commands below.

View user permissions:

get-managementroleassignment -role "support diagnostics" | ft identity  

get-managementroleassignment -role "mailbox import export" | ft identity

     Now you’re ready to start searching  for email and deleting the messages. If you happen to have a user with an email they can’t delete you can use this method to remove it for them. The following command will allow you to remove a message from a single users mailbox.

Search user mailbox for content matching abcd1234 and delete message:*See AQS link below for additional search criteria

search-mailbox -identity someuser -searchquery abcd1234 -deletecontent

     Let’s step things up a notch.  With the next command you can search every mailbox in a specified database. Change the switch to –server and you can search every box on a server. The command below searches every mailbox in the userdb database. The –resultsize unlimited allows it to search over 1000 mailboxes, without this command it will stop searching after reaching a 1000. You can use several critiria in the –searchquery switch and you can use the “AND” connector to search on multiple criteria. Review the link for AQS to see more. This command would be what you want to run first to view a log of the results. It will put a CSV attachment in the mailbox and folder specified with the details of every email it matches against. Verify the results shown here match the emails you want to remove.

Search all mailboxes in database and log results:

get-mailbox -database userdb -resultsize unlimited | search-mailbox -searchquery "from:someuser@domain.com AND Subject:`Find This Email'" -targetmailbox myuser -targetfolder resultsfolder -LogOnly -Loglevel Full

     Once you have ran the previous command and verified the desired results, you are ready to delete the emails from your search. The command below is the same as above except instead of logging the messages this time it will delete them.

Search all mailboxes in database and delete found messages:

get-mailbox -database usersdb -resultsize unlimited | search-mailbox -searchquery "from:someuser@domain.com AND Subject:`Find This Email'" -deletecontent

Additional information about the commands used above can be seen on the links below:

Get-Mailbox

Search-Mailbox

Advanced Query Search

Permissions

New-ManagementRoleAssignment