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Exchange Server 2010 - Delete mail from all mailboxes from a specific user.

Ben Cary 1 Reputation point
2021-02-05T10:27:28.403+00:00

Morning,

We have a user, Auto Email, that sends out various reports to many users. Some of which people reply to that triggers a function in the database. The problem is there are now thousands of these emails that need purging, I need to :-

I need to delete all email sent from this account from all user mailboxes prior to 01/01/2021.

I need to delete all email sent to this account from all user mailboxes prior to 01/01/2021.

Is there a way this can be done in Powershell ?

Any help greatly appriciated

B

Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server: A family of Microsoft client/server messaging and collaboration software.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Xzsssss 8,861 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-02-08T06:05:33.763+00:00

    Hi @Ben Cary ,

    As Troy said, you could use Search-Mailbox to find these mails and use -DeleteContent to delete them:
    Delete received messages: 

    Search-Mailbox -Identity User01 -SearchQuery ‘Received<01/01/2021’ -DeleteContent.

    65231-image.png

    Delete Sent messages: 

    Search-Mailbox -Identity User01 -SearchQuery ‘Sent<01/01/2021’ -DeleteContent

    Note these cmdlets will permanently delete these messages, they won’t go to the recovery items folder.

    Regards,
    Lou

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  2. Ben Cary 1 Reputation point
    2021-02-11T10:04:00.627+00:00

    Goord morning,

    I get this far :-

    66951-image.png

    I cant see what this error means ?

    Also this look like its going to delete from the mailbox "Autoemail", I wanted to delete from all company mailboxes anything received from the account "AutoEmail" ?

    Sorry for my dumbness

  3. Ben Cary 1 Reputation point
    2021-02-11T14:24:23.287+00:00

    Thanks @Andy David - MVP

    Thanks for the reply.

    I have tried running the first one (i have created a new mailbox called tesetdelete) and put that where you have said target mailbox ?? It then asks for Folder ?

    66937-image.png

  4. Ben Cary 1 Reputation point
    2021-02-11T14:57:59.02+00:00

    Thanks @Andy David - MVP ,

    I tried and failed, maybe I should give up !

    67023-image.png

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  5. Andy David - MVP 145.6K Reputation points MVP
    2021-02-11T16:08:56.127+00:00

    Ok, try this then :) ( I dont have a 2010 server to test against). You may have to mess with it a bit and try diff things out 

    Get-mailbox -result unlimited | Search-mailbox  -searchQuery {((Received -lt '01/21/2021') -and (from: Autoemail))} -TargetMailbox targetmailbox  -TargetFolder Inbox - 
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