Skip to main content

Finding and Removing Empty Distribution Lists/Groups via a script

Somebody asked about this one last week while there are some valid reasons for having empty distribution lists usually they are things that can stick around because no-one's quite sure if they should be deleted. Writing a script to find and delete empty distribution lists is not too hard although I have put a bunch of safeguards in this script to stop you deleting any groups that you may not want to. Note this script doesn’t differentiate between a distribution group and a security group it just looks for any groups that are mail enabled that have no members.

The script first does a search of AD for all mail enabled groups in active directory. It then connects to each group and starts going though its members. If there are more the 10 users in the group it stops counting. This wasn’t really a script to document the members in groups as this can get quite complicated when you consider nesting groups. If you’re after such a script Richard Muller has already written a great script to do this see http://www.rlmueller.net/. After a group is identified as empty the script will then ask if you wish to delete this group. This delete is irreversible so you need to make sure you don’t want to use this group and you have no security associations with it.

The script has two modes it can run in if you just run it with no command line parameters it will just display the mail enabled groups in Active Directory with the member counts (up to 10) for each group. Running the script with the remove switch eg cscript emptdist.vbs remove will run the script in remove mode which means it will prompt you to delete any groups that are found to have no members.

I’ve put a downloadable copy of this script here the script itself look like.


if wscript.arguments.length = 0 then
wscript.echo "Display Mode"
else
if lcase(wscript.arguments(0)) = "remove" then
mode = "remove"
wscript.echo "Remove Mode"
else
wscript.echo "Display Mode"
end if
end if
set conn = createobject("ADODB.Connection")
set com = createobject("ADODB.Command")
Set iAdRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
strDefaultNamingContext = iAdRootDSE.Get("defaultNamingContext")
Conn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
Conn.Open "ADs Provider"
GALQueryFilter = "(&(mailnickname=*)(|(objectCategory=group)))"
strQuery = "<LDAP://" & strDefaultNamingContext & ">;" & GALQueryFilter & ";distinguishedName,displayname,legacyExchangeDN,homemdb;subtree"
Com.ActiveConnection = Conn
Com.CommandText = strQuery
Set Rs = Com.Execute
wscript.echo "# Memebers GroupName"
wscript.echo
while not rs.eof
set objgroup = getobject("LDAP://" & replace(rs.fields("distinguishedName"),"/","\/"))

numcheck = 0
for each member in objgroup.members
numcheck = numcheck + 1
if numcheck = 10 then exit for
next
select case numcheck
case 0 wscript.echo "Empty" & " " & rs.fields("displayname")
if mode = "remove" then
contname = replace(objgroup.distinguishedName,"CN=" & objgroup.cn & ",","")
wscript.echo
wscript.echo "The Group " & rs.fields("displayname") & " in the " & contname & "
container is Empty"
WScript.StdOut.WriteLine "Do you wish to delete this List Press Y to Delete
(This is a irreversible operation)"
ans = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine
if lcase(ans) = "y" then
set objcont = getobject("LDAP://" & replace(contname,"/","\/"))
objcont.delete "group", "CN=" & replace(objgroup.cn,"/","\/")
objcont.setinfo
Wscript.echo "Deleted Group " & objgroup.displayname
else
wscript.echo "Skipping"
end if
wscript.echo
end if
case 10 wscript.echo "10+" & " " & rs.fields("displayname")
case else wscript.echo numcheck & " " & rs.fields("displayname")
end select
rs.movenext
wend

Popular posts from this blog

Export calendar Items to a CSV file using Microsoft Graph and Powershell

For the last couple of years the most constantly popular post by number of views on this blog has been  Export calendar Items to a CSV file using EWS and Powershell closely followed by the contact exports scripts. It goes to show this is just a perennial issue that exists around Mail servers, I think the first VBS script I wrote to do this type of thing was late 90's against Exchange 5.5 using cdo 1.2. Now it's 2020 and if your running Office365 you should really be using the Microsoft Graph API to do this. So what I've done is create a PowerShell Module (and I made it a one file script for those that are more comfortable with that format) that's a port of the EWS script above that is so popular. This script uses the ADAL library for Modern Authentication (which if you grab the library from the PowerShell gallery will come down with the module). Most EWS properties map one to one with the Graph and the Graph actually provides better information on recurrences then...
Read more

Downloading a shared file from Onedrive for business using Powershell

I thought I'd quickly share this script I came up with to download a file that was shared using One Drive for Business (which is SharePoint under the covers) with Powershell. The following script takes a OneDrive for business URL which would look like https://mydom-my.sharepoint.com/personal/gscales_domain_com/Documents/Email%20attachments/filename.txt This script is pretty simple it uses the SharePoint CSOM (Client side object Model) which it loads in the first line. It uses the URI object to separate the host and relative URL which the CSOM requires and also the SharePointOnlineCredentials object to handle the Office365 SharePoint online authentication. The following script is a function that take the OneDrive URL, Credentials for Office365 and path you want to download the file to and downloads the file. eg to run the script you would use something like ./spdownload.ps1 ' https://mydom-my.sharepoint.com/personal/gscales_domain_com/Documents/Email%20attachments/filen...
Read more

Sending a MimeMessage via the Microsoft Graph using the Graph SDK, MimeKit and MSAL

One of the new features added to the Microsoft Graph recently was the ability to create and send Mime Messages (you have been able to get Message as Mime for a while). This is useful in a number of different scenarios especially when trying to create a Message with inline Images which has historically been hard to do with both the Graph and EWS (if you don't use MIME). It also opens up using SMIME for encryption and a more easy migration path for sending using SMTP in some apps. MimeKit is a great open source library for parsing and creating MIME messages so it offers a really easy solution for tackling this issue. The current documentation on Send message via MIME lacks any real sample so I've put together a quick console app that use MSAL, MIME kit and the Graph SDK to send a Message via MIME. As the current Graph SDK also doesn't support sending via MIME either there is a workaround for this in the future my guess is this will be supported.
Read more
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.