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27 Apr 2010 | Brien Posey, Contributor

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Both Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 use Exchange Management Shell (EMS),
a command-line management tool. Although you can perform basic Exchange management tasks
using the graphical user interface, you can only perform certain administrative actions from the
command line. This tip explains some basic EMS commands for managing Exchange Server
from the command line.

 


The Invoke-Item command can be compared to an automated double-click. For example, you
could use the Invoke-Item command to open an HTML document, instead of double clicking on
the file itself. To do so, append the path and filename to the Invoke-Item command:

 
   


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Active Directory contains a wealth of information. When a new user account is created,
information such as the user's title, department, manager and phone number may be entered into
Active Directory.

You can extract this information from Active Directory using an EMS command. For example,
you would use the following command to create a list of each user's name and job title.

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The Get-User command retrieves a list of all Active Director users. The pipe symbol ( | )
redirects the command's output into a secondary command. In this case, the secondary command
tells Exchange to format the output as a table and to display the user's name and title. Name and
Title are names of Active Directory attributes; you can substitute other attribute names or add
attributes.


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Exchange Server 2007 required you to manage public folders from the command line, unless you
had an Exchange Server 2003 public folder server in your organization. And although Exchange
2007 SP1 included public folder management tools, it's still important to know how to manage
public folders from the command line.

One of the simplest public folder management tasks is creating a new public folder. For example,
suppose that you wanted to create a public folder named K . To do so, you should use this
command:

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,,+,.c/01,

The path is set to \, so this command will create a top-level public folder. You could also create a
sub folder by extending the path. For instance, you would include the HR folder in the pat to
create a folder named 4
 beneath the HR folder on the same public folder server.

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EMS also allows you to move a mailbox to a different database. The following command moves
a user named °
 to a mailbox database named °
:

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This command begins with the Get-Mailbox command, which specifies User 3 in this instance.
But you could use a variation of this command to retrieve multiple mailboxes. Next, the
command pipes the retrieved mailbox into the Move-Mailbox command. Notice that you're
required to provide the Move-Mailbox command with the name of the target mailbox database.


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Until you have a handle on how EMS works, it's easy to accidentally perform an unintended
operation. The ±ValidateOnly option protects you from your own mistakes.

The ValidateOnly option allows you to see what would have happened if you had executed a
command -- without any potentially disastrous side effects. If you wanted to find out what would
happen if you executed the Move-Mailbox command from the section above, for example, you
could append the ValidateOnly option to the command. This command allows you to test the
command without actually moving the mailbox.

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&
 ValidateOnly doesn't work with every EMS command, but does work with several of them.

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If you've done a lot of work with the Exchange Management Console (EMC), then you know
that most of the administrative actions you can perform are wizard-based. When you complete a
management task, the wizard's final screen provides you with an EMS command that would
perform the same action. Figure 1 shows the command that displays after creating a new mailbox.

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The Exchange Management Console is built on top of EMS. Whenever you perform a task
through the console, it actually sends a command to EMS behind the scenes. This means that the
command shown after the task was completed is the exact command that Exchange used
internally.

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