CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellexchange-server-2010exchange-server-2013
Johnrad
Johnrad

Reputation: 2655

DeleteContent not deleting items correctly/at all

To preface this all, I am running this script in the US against a US mailbox server. The mail that I am wanting to delete is also mail that I have exported to a PST.

The mailbox Export uses a ContentFilter while a deleteContent uses a SearchQuery. These 2 acts of grabing information seem to act very different to me.

I have successfully been able to export the mail I want to a PST, however deleting the content has been posing a huge problem.

I am trying to delete mailbox items that are before the current get-date using the code below. I swear I have been following Microsoft's documentation on this, however nothing is working for me. 

$date = (get-date -hour 00 minute 00 second 00).ToShortDateString()
Search-Mailbox -Identity "id" -SearchQuery "Received:<$($date)" -deleteContent -force

This is not working. I am getting an error:

The property keyword isn't supported.
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [], ParserException

Please see edits below as I have fixed my string, however the issue still persists. It seems as though the < is what is messing up the query.

EDIT

"Received:<'$date'" - This executes when I specify it as my SearchQuery however no results come back.

It seems like the < is what is messing up my query. Once I remove the < and leave the query as "Received:'$date'" it deletes all emails from todays date.

Also, it appears that the time is offset by 5 hours when doing this. I am in the US and the mailbox server I am running this on is in the US, yet it is still acting like it could be using UTC time. How do I fix this? More importantely though, why isn't my less than working.

EDIT 2:

I have also attempted to do querys such as "Received -lt '$date'" this is not working also.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1710

Answers (1)

RickH
RickH

Reputation: 2486

Try: $date.ToUniversalTime().ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ")

While the above will get you an ISO 8601 datetime, it doesn't look like the search query is using the full thing. I did find that the below syntax seem to work at least for the date part:

$date = (get-date).Date.ToUniversalTime().ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ")
Search-Mailbox -Identity "id" -SearchQuery "Received<$date" -deleteContent -force

The SearchQuery argument is using KQL, which is documented at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ee558911(v=office.15).aspx

Unfortunately since it seems Exchange is ignoring the time part, I'm guessing that this is going to be limited to filtering at UTC midnight. Looking at the docs, there is shorthand that will give you the same results:

Search-Mailbox -Identity "id" -SearchQuery "Received<today" -deleteContent -force

Upvotes: 4

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