Exchange Command Search-Mailbox

Question

Hello,

I would delete old mail content from exchange.
I want to know if I execute below.
What if I would execute next two below command.

when second shell is being executed after first, does exchange search whole entire tony's mailbox?

Get-Mailbox -Server hostname |Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery {(sent -lt “2021-07-26 12:01”)} -DeleteContent -Force
New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox Tony -ContentFilter (Sent -gt '2021-07-26 12:01')" -FilePath "\SERVER01\PSTFileShare\Tony_CompanyProfits.pst"

Answer 1

Hi @Anonymous

What version of Exchange server are you using?

About the first command Get-Mailbox -Server hostname |Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery {(sent -lt “2021-07-26 12:01”)} -DeleteContent -Force,
I tested it in my lab (Exchange 2016) and found that if using sent -lt "2021-07-26 12:01", it does not return the correct results.

I suppose you may need to use sent <"2021-07-26 12:01" instead of sent -lt "2021-07-26 12:01" according to this link:
Message properties and search operators for In-Place eDiscovery

And in addition, before completely deleting the contents, it is recommended to use the following command to first generate a report of the search results:

Get-Mailbox -Server hostname | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery {(sent <"2021-07-26 12:01)} -TargetMailbox "administrator" -TargetFolder "inbox" -Logonly -LogLevel Full  

If the results are correct, you may run the first command with -DeleteContent -Force parameters to delete the items.

Get-Mailbox -Server hostname | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery {(sent <"2021-07-26 12:01)} -DeleteContent -Force  

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when second shell is being executed after first, does exchange search whole entire tony's mailbox?

Sorry I was a little confused with the question.

To my understanding, the first command would search all mailboxes in the organization and delete all sent items which were sent before 2021/07/26 12:01.
And the second command would export sent items in Tony's mailbox which were sent after 2021/07/26 12:01 to a pst file.

So the second command is supposed to search entire Tony's mailbox and filter the items using the content filter "(Sent -gt '2021-07-26 12:01')".
If the first command has been executed before the second command, it would speed up the export process as old emails would be deleted by the first command.

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