Hello fellow Exchange Admins, Yesterday I exported a 30GB Mailbox as a .pst file to our SFTP server. At about 90% the MailboxExportRequest stalled with StalledDueToSource_DiskLatency.

No other exports were running from the source server. I even disabled all scheduled tasks that could have an impact on the database where the mailbox is mounted.

However, the export request always switched to: StalledDueToSource_DiskLatency

As a consequence, the export started to loop. It just created a new folder hierarchy and started to export the items again.

Therefore the export .pst was growing much bigger than the initial mailbox size. In other words, this can blow up your storage capacities if you have a large mailbox and leave the export overnight! Not to mention that the export is useless afterward.

In this post, I want to share how I worked around the StalledDueToSource_DiskLatency condition.

Let’s start at the beginning:

You can find more useful details on monitoring export requests here:

Monitor Mailbox Exports

The pain started whenever the export reached completion of 100%.
The job was relinquished due to large delays and unfavorable server health on the source server-side.

As can be seen in the image below the export status stayed inProgress.
While SyncStage was CopyingMessages and StatusDetail was StalledDueToSource_DiskLatency:

Therefore the export job was relinquished:

Eventually, the export started all over again. StatusDetail: CreatingFolderHerarchy:

Then PercentComplete was 10% again:

As a result, the size of the export PST grew much bigger than the initial mailbox size.

After all, the solution for me was to switch the mailbox database that hosts the mailbox to another copy within the DAG:

Work around StalledDueToSource_DiskLatency

After the database is switched to another server try to export the mailbox with a new export request.
Given that the new server has no performance or disk issues the export should complete in a normal manner.

Have a nice day

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Hello folks, Today I would like to share my experience so far on how to export a mailbox with New-MailboxExportRequest. There are a couple of parameters to query to get useful information about the status of an export request.

As long as everything goes smooth you will probably just need the percentage information. But when the New-MailboxExportRequest stalls or stops with an error you will be happy to have some additional parameters to query at your disposal.

So let’s get to the point straight away:

Start to export a mailbox with New-MailboxExportRequest:

After you have started the export request check the progress:

First, a short info on the -IncludeReport switch:

When this switch is used in accordance with select Report the ouptut looks like this:

The output displays the currently processed items. Depending on the mailbox size the output can get much longer. Below the report, the output of other parameters you have selected is displayed.

New-MailboxExportRequest relevant infos that can be selected:

Modify parameters of a mailbox export request:

To modify the parameters of an existing mailbox export request you will need to suspend the request first. This can be useful when you retrospectively want to change the BadItemnLimit or want to raise the priority.

Suspend the mailbox export request:

Now change the parameters [Example: BadItemLimit]

Resume the mailbox export request:

Remove-MailboxExportRequest

Here are two arguments to remove mailbox export requests you don’t need anymore:

• To export a mailbox with New-MailboxExportRequest with the same request name.
• Further, do some housekeeping and keep your environment clean and transparent.

Have a nice day!

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In this post, I would like to share how I got around a Mailbox Locked Mailbox Move issue. After we have successfully moved several hundred mailboxes to their new location some issues occurred with a few mailboxes.

Moves for those mailboxes could not be started with the -priority switch due to the fact that the target location wasn’t on-premise.

As a result, some of those boxes just stalled. Restarting the Mailbox Replication Service on the relevant source server did the trick. The stalled move requests could be reinitiated. Only one mailbox remained.

However, the remaining mailbox was locked. I tried to move the mailbox to another mailbox database but received the same error as with the move-request:

It seemed like the mailbox had a locked flag ( or something similar ) set in the information store of the source server that mounts the mailbox database for this mailbox. If so, I would have to restart the information store or reboot the server to wipe this flag. Not the first choice for a production server.

I never had this kind of mailbox locked mailbox move issue before.
So I started to google and fortunately found this article on dirteam.com.

The article made me confident that it is most probably locked in the information store on the source server. Switching the mounted mailbox database where the locked mailbox resides to another server just did it. Simple as that. Thank you, DirTeam!

Here the short procedure to solve the mailbox locked mailbox move issue:

After the mailbox database was mounted on another server I was able to start and complete the move of the last mailbox successfully.

Have a nice day!
 
 
If you run into other issues with move requests this could also be of interest:

Mailbox Moves
 

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Did you ever receive inquiries about strange mailbox behavior like users state that mails have been deleted without any interaction of the mailbox owner? In cases like this, you are happy to enable Mailbox Audit Logging on the affected mailbox.

This post is about how to enable Mailbox Audit Logging on a certain mailbox and configure the auditing parameters to provide the most relevant insights. Let’s get to the point straight away:

Enable Mailbox Audit Logging on a mailbox

Check the audit status on a certain mailbox:

Enable Mailbox Audit Logging:

Define operations that should be audited:

Depending on what circumstances make a mailbox audit logging necessary you can change the predefined audit operations to more relevant ones. Find a list of actions logged by mailbox audit logging here.

Usually, I completely change the actions for AuditOwner. AuditOwner = MailboxOwner
To do so use the following command:

Set-Mailbox MailboxName -AuditOwner “Create, SoftDelete, HardDelete, Update, Move, MoveToDeletedItems,MailboxLogin”

Adjust the logged actions according to the list by Microsoft mentioned above.
Use -AuditAdmin or -AuditDelegate instead of -AuditOwner to change logged operations for Admin or Delegates.

Search Mailbox Audit Logs

Define your query:

The Search-MailboxAuditLog CMDlet seems only to work out of an Exchange Management Shell. Out of an ISE loaded with an Exchange PS-Snapin, I always get an error.

Undoubtedly the filter for date ranges in connection with the Search-MailboxAuditLog CMDlet is somewhat imprecise. If you want to query a range from 3 days ago until today for instance I recommend setting the end date of the query to the date of tomorrow. Otherwise, it can happen that no results will be shown for the current day or even the day before.

Stay safe folks!
 

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Assuming the HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled attribute is set to $False on the mailbox or distribution group.

When an entry is missing in the Global Address List it is not necessarily needed but good to know if we can find the object in the GAL on the server.

If an entry is missing in the Global Address List you can query the GAL on the server:

Independently from the outcome of the above PowerShell commands I usually update the Offline Address Book and the Global Address List afterward.

I have put in the option to query the Global Address List for the missing entry because I usually do it.

Ok here we go > Update the Offline Address Book:

Now update the Global Address List:

In most cases, this solves it.
 
I usually wait 15 Minutes [ one AD sync cycle ] before notifying the customer.
The user should download the Address Book afterward or restart Outlook.
In OWA new entries should be visible straight away.
 

If the problem persists check the showInAddressBook attribute on the object in AD:

Compare the values of the attribute showInAddressBook with an account or DL that is available in the Global Address List and add them accordingly if one or more entries are missing.

If appropriate entries are missing here you wouldn’t get a result when querying the GAL for the missing entry at the beginning of this post. Further it is likely that HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled is set to $true.

When HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled is set to $true:

Find some examples at the end of this Microsoft description.
 
If all entries are visible in showInAddressBook you should be fine.
Otherwise add the missing entries under showInAddressBook.

 
Have a nice day!
 
 
Want to activate an Out of Office message while retaining the formating?

Out Of Office Multiline Message through PowerShell

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The size of these folders located under the path below can take be up to 2GB for each version:

The question is:

Is it safe to remove old owa versions?

Unfortunately, I never found a satisfying answer to this question from Microsoft. On technet forums you can find answers like You can do it but it is not recommended.

This it is not a statement that makes you remove old OWA versions with peace of mind.
So I gave it a try in our test environment.

As you can see in the picture below there are some OWA version folders in the /Owa directory. The last modified date matches the date we have installed CU12 on this server. These folders belong to the current OWA version at that time. ( before we installed CU14).

In the /Owa/prem folder on the right side, you see the real OWA version folders with about 1GB in size which is eating up your disk space. After every CU install a new OWA version folder is added and the older versions are kept.

After no problems occurred in our test environment I have used the same procedure in our production environment ( 18 servers ). There were no problems reported as well while having different CUs in place and no problems after all servers have been upgraded.

Stay healthy!

Need to change the input language on Server Core?

Change input language via PowerShell

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Hello Folks. To filter mails for certain criteria like sender, recipients, domain, header-information and more it makes sense to create a new Mail Flow Rule ( former Transport Rule ) and associate it with an action of your choice.

You could, for example, use a Mail Flow Rule to pretend [EXT] to the subject when a mail comes from an external sender or you could use a rule to classify emails with certain header-information as SPAM and move them to the user’s Junk-Mail folder.

Ok, let’s get into it. In this example we will create a rule that tags mails from external senders with [EXT]:

Create a new Mail Flow Rule via ECP:

> In ECP navigate to mail flow > rules and click the + icon. Choose Create a new rule.

The Drop-Down offers several templates for new rules.
We won’t use them here since we want to create a new Mail Flow Rule from scratch.

Specify the name and criteria of the new Mail Flow Rule:

We will create a rule which pretends [EXT] to the message subject when a mail comes from a sender outside of your organization.

> Specify the name of the rule
> Click More options

For an Exchange environment hosting a single tenant:

> Under Apply this rule if choose The sender… > is external/internal
> Set it to Outside the organization
> Add another condition
> Choose The recipient… > domain is
> Add the domain for which you want to mark external mails
> Under Do the following… choose Prepend the subject of the message with…
> Enter your preferred tag ( e.g. [EXT] )

> Further down set Match sender address in message to > Envelope

For a multi-tenant Exchange environment:

Exchange considers a sender to be external if:
• The sender’s email address isn’t in an accepted domain.
• The sender’s email address is in an accepted domain that’s configured as an external relay domain.

In a multi-tenant environment where tenants send mails between each other, the sender will not be considered as an external sender from the recipient’s point of view since the sender’s domain is an accepted domain. This means we cannot use the same conditions as we have used in a single-tenant environment.

> Under Apply this rule if choose The sender… > address matches any of these text patterns
> Enter @ as a specified word or phrase
> Add another condition
> Choose The recipient… > domain is
> Add the domain for which you want to mark external mails
> Under Do the following… choose Prepend the subject of the message with…
> Enter your preferred tag ( e.g. [EXT] )
> Under Except if choose The sender > domain is
> Enter one or more domains you don’t want to be marked as an external sender

> Further down set Match sender address in message to > Envelope

Create a new Mail Flow Rule using PowerShell:

For an Exchange environment hosting a single tenant

Create a new Mail Flow Rule using the New-TransportRule cmdlet with the following parameters:

A Short explanation of the used parameters:

For a multi-tenant Exchange environment
Create a new Rule with the parameters below:

A Short explanation of the used parameters:

Summary:

Find a description on the conditions here: Mail flow rule conditions

Have a nice day!
 

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We receive requests to activate Out Of Office messages for several mailboxes on a daily base. It is not a complicated task but can be time-consuming when you need to set up Out Of Office messages containing multiple lines, that you adjust within HTML tags, for a variety of mailboxes from several customers. You probably know what I mean: Are the line break tags at the right place? Does the next paragraph begin where it should?

For this reason, I wanted to achieve that we are able just to copy and paste the Out Of Office message from the request, provide the type of the AutoReplyState (enable, disable, schedule) and get visual feedback on the applied attributes, without the need to picture the original customer OOO message in HTML. My script at point 3 of this post will exactly do this.

In the following lines, you can find options on how to activate or disable Out Of Office messages from PowerShell.

Set up a one-liner absence message using PowerShell:

If you just want to give a short note of your absence the command below should be sufficient:

Change the AutoReplyState according to your needs:

If you set the AutoReplyState to Scheduled you will need to provide a Start-Time and End-Time. Enter the date-format according to your system settings followed by start and end time:

Set up a multiline absence message using HTML tags in PowerShell:

To set up a multiline Out Of Office message you will need to use HTML tags to preserve the layout.
For example, you receive a request to activate the following message:

One option can be to use <br> tags at the end of each line and place an additional <br> tag for an empty line in your InternalMessage / External Message.

This option suits mostly scenarios where the message layout does not change and you only want to edit the content. The <br> tags stay where they are.

The next possibility is a little bit more convenient. Instead of using <br> tags you could use <pre></pre> tags and simply paste the Out Of Office message between them:

This is also how the script at point 3 works. It utilizes the <pre></pre> tags.

Script to activate a multiline Out Of Office message:

Usage:

Sorry if the common PowerShell colors are displayed here in a different way. It is no easy task to find a plugin that renders and exactly highlights PowerShell in the Backend. ( no hosting on 3rd party servers )
I thought about rewriting the CSS for this one, but it would be too time-consuming. So if you know a plugin or method to highlight PowerShell code that preserves the PowerShell color scheme I would be grateful to get a hint.

Annoyed by waiting for Outlook to start?
Maybe you can sort it out with this one:

Slow loading Outlook profile

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The replay queue was continuously played down to zero despite of having the ReplayLagTime set to 3 and a half days.
ContentIndexState was in status Healthy instead of AutoSuspended.

The following screenshot shows states of  lagged copies on the server where only lagged copies reside. The affected ones have a replay queue count zero or one :

We have for each mailbox database 2 copies and a lagged mailbox database copy in place. According to that the ActivationPreference for each lagged mailbox database copy is 4.
But the mentioned lagged copies appeared to behave like normal copies. ActivationSuspended was set to $true since they were born to be lagged copies.

Not every passive copy on the same server ( this server hosts only lagged copies ) showed this behaviour and all parameters for the affected lagged copies were identical with each passive copy where it worked.

My colleague created a new mailbox database that day with 2 copies and a lagged mailbox database copy. After the new database was in place the lagged copy was not lagging as well. This time the passive copy was hosted on another server.

It turns out that all mailbox databases where the lagged mailbox database copy does not work correctly have a normal copy on the same other server. Next step was to check the state of the DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy of this server.

And yeah , this was it :

The DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy was set to Blocked. We switched it to unrestricted and stayed patient. After some hours the lagged mailbox database copy started replay logs

As we understand :

Exchange assumes you have a mounted mailbox database, 2 copies and a lagged mailbox database copy in place. When the replication does not see one of the copies it will treat the next available database copy [ in this case the lagged copy ] as the second copy and will play down the replay queue utilizing this copy as a healthy normal copy.

As soon the original 2nd copy becomes visible [ setting the DatabaseCopyAutoActivationPolicy state to unrestricted ] the assumed default set is complete ( with min. 2 existing normal copies ) the lagged copy will be treated as lagged mailbox database copy again.

I think we left one server in state blocked after our maintenance. Luckily it got noticed straight away.

It was not a big task to solve the problem with switching the activation policy to unrestricted , but it took time to get a clue where the culprit was in the chain.
Hope you can save this time with this post.

Have a nice day

Got an Healthy And Upgrading state on your passive copy ? See what it means :

ContentIndexState Healthy And Upgrading

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Well , we do not offer public folders based on the shared character of the environment. For customers without Sharepoint , managing and sharing contacts via Sharepoint isn’t an option as well. The only thing what’s left is the classical way via Outlook.

You can create a mailbox before with the only purpose to share contacts out of it.

Ok , let’s get straight to it :

If you want to share certain contacts with certain people , create a new contact folder and fill it with contacts you want to share with e.g. colleague 1 and colleague 2.

Navigate to People in the bottom bar :

Click your default Contact Folder and create a new folder :

Right click the just created Contacts folder and choose Share > Share Contacts

Add the recipients you want to share Contacts with ( e.g. colleague 1 and colleague 2 ). If you tick in Recipient can add, edit and delete items in this contact folder you will grant Editor permissions to the recipients. In this example we want the recipients to be able to edit those shared Contacts. Click Send when you are done :

You will be prompted for confirmation. The persons you have chosen to share contacts with will be displayed with the granted permissions. In this case Editor, since we have checked this option before.

On recipients side open the just received Sharing invitation mail and open the Contacts folder out of the mail :

The shared Contacts folder will be added to your Contacts :

The recipients will be able to add – modify – delete contacts in the shared Contacts folder, since we have granted them Editor permissions.

A more convenient way to share Contacts directly through the permissions tab of the source Contacts folder could have been useful , but this way has its limitations though.
It appears you can just share your default Contacts folder. No sub folders can be shared, which is useful to share different contact folders with certain people. When this fits you your needs choose this way :

Grant the appropriate permissions on you default Contacts folder :

This will not trigger a sharing invitation mail but in the end we need the permissions, not the mail.

Conclusion :

Add new people you want to share dedicated Contact folders with ( sub folders of your main Contacts ) by sending a sharing invitation mail. Grant Editor permissions within the mail ( if you want your recipients to be able to add – modify and delete contact entries. )

Modify or remove permissions via properties and the permissions tab of your Shared Contacts folder.

Note:

It is not possible to use the shared Contacts from the address book by design.

Good Bye from client side today

You get continously prompted for a password in Outlook ?

Read how to solve it

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