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Filter Messages in Queues

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Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2

You can use Queue Viewer or the Exchange Management Shell to filter messages in the queues on a computer that has the Exchange Server 2010 Hub Transport server role or the Edge Transport server role installed. The list of messages can be lengthy, depending on current mail flow. The list of messages changes when messages enter and leave the server.

When you filter messages by message properties, you can adjust your search to specific criteria and locate messages that may be causing a mail flow problem or are suspected spam. You can then perform operations that modify the status of those messages.

To learn more about filtering messages, see "Message Filtering Scenarios" in Understanding Transport Queues.

Looking for other management tasks related to queues? Check out Managing Transport Queues.

Use Queue Viewer to filter messages in queues

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Queues" entry in the Transport Permissions topic.

  1. Open the EMC.

  2. In the console tree, click Toolbox.

  3. In the result pane, click Exchange Queue Viewer.

  4. In the action pane, click Open Tool.

  5. In Queue Viewer, click the Messages tab. A list of all messages in all queues on the server to which you are connected is displayed. To limit the view to a single queue, click the Queues tab, double-click the queue name, and then click the Server\Queue tab that appears.

  6. Click Create Filter, and enter your filter expression as follows:

    1. Select a message property from the message property drop-down list.

    2. Select a comparison operator from the comparison operator drop-down list.

    3. Enter the value from the value drop-down list. If the property has fixed values, select a value from the drop-down list. If the property requires a date/time expression, change the current date/time values or click the drop-down list to select a date from the calendar interface.

  7. (Optional) Click Add Expression to specify additional filter criteria. Only messages that meet all filter criteria will be displayed.

  8. Click Apply Filter. The results of messages that meet the filter criteria are displayed.

Use the Shell to filter messages in queues

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Queues" entry in the Transport Permissions topic.

To filter messages in queues, use the following syntax.

Get-Message -Filter {property -operator "value"}

This example uses the Get-Message cmdlet to view all messages that have a spam confidence level (SCL) value equal to or greater than 6 and that were sent from any sender in the Contoso.com domain.

Get-Message -Filter {SCL -ge 6 -and FromAddress -eq "*Contoso.com"}

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Get-Message.

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