Many of you will be aware that if you wish to clear down Disconnected or Soft deleted mailboxes in bulk from Mailbox Databases on Exchange 2010 SP1 and above you can use the following Powershell command(s):
$Mailboxes = Get-MailboxStatistics -Database “<DBName>” | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null }
$Mailboxes | ForEach { Remove-Mailbox -Database $_.Database -StoreMailboxIdentity $_.MailboxGuid -confirm:$false }
However there is no GUI interface within the Exchange Management Console to perform this task, nor is it straight forward to purge mailboxes individually (like you could in Exchange 2003) from the Exchange Management Shell. So, I decided to break out my copy of Visual Studio to put together an application that provides a GUI overlay to the process of purging single mailboxes from a database ~ which I have affectionately named the xPM.
Prerequisites
Before downloading and running the tool you should ensure that you host machine meets the following requirements:
- The tool should be executed from a machine with the Exchange 2010 Management Tools (Service Pack 1 and above) – the tool is not supported against the RTM
- .NET Framework 3.5 and above
Download
You can download the xPM to your Exchange 2010 management machine from the link below:
[ xPM (eXchange Purge Mailboxes Tool – Version 1.0 – 324KB ]
Installation
The xPM is supplied as a simple Self Extracting archive.
When you have downloaded it to your machine – follow the on-screen prompts which will place the single product binary into a folder in the root of your c:\ drive (c:\xPM).
Tool usage
When you execute the xPM you will be presented with the screen shown in the screenshot below – click on the “Refresh” button to retrieve a list of all your Mailbox Databases:
Selecting a mailbox database will populate the “Disconnected Mailboxes” area (if there are any disconnected mailboxes which can be purged from that store) – see below:
Select the mailbox that you would like to remove permanently and then click on the “Purge” button – see below
That’s all there is to it! I hope that you like the tool and find it useful.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Great idea!
Tried it, I get an error on Win Server 2003 32-bit:
“The image file c:\xMP\xPM.exe is valid, but it is for a machine type other than the current machine.”
Just for information folks, The xpm is only supported with Exchange 2010 SP1 and above on an x64 O/S as it is a 64 bit image and uses some native Exchange 2010 SP1 cmdlets.
Andy
Why does the App sometimes seem “HUNG” its very slow? what can cause this?
Regards
Paul
Hiya Paul,
This can be caused by a few things
1. If you have a large number of mailbox databases and are executing remotely (on a workstation to an Exchange Server over a WAN link) 2. If you have a large number of disconnected mailboxes within a store and are executing remotely (on a workstation to an Exchange Server over a WAN link) 3. Execution within large infrastructures
If the above does not match your setup – please let me know, Cheers A