Cleaning out the Skeletons in your mailbox by deleting all the Empty folders with EWS and Get-MailboxFolderStatistics

One of the things you may find if your using Archive or Retention policies a lot is that you end up with skeleton folders in your mailbox. Which are basically the old folders trees that are all now empty because the items have been moved to the Archive or aged out of the Mailbox. To see your skeletons you can use the Get-MailboxFolderStatistics cmdlet and something like this to identify user created folders that are empty.

get-mailboxfolderstatistics $MailboxName | Where-Object{$_.FolderType -eq "User Created" -band $_.ItemsInFolderAndSubFolders -eq 0}

If you want to delete those folders there is no cmdlet to do this so you need to use EWS. Following on from my last post we can take the FolderId from Get-MailboxFolderStatistics convert this Id to a EWSId so we can then bind to the folder in EWS and then delete it using the Delete method.

I've put together a sample script to show how to do this by first using the Get-MailboxFolderStatistics and then in EWS ConvertId and Delete (a soft folder deletion).

The script itself isn't really intelligent in that it doesn't delete a Sub-folder before the Root folder if both are empty (it just depends they way they comes out). It just relies on the Try-Catch to ignore any errors and uses the EWS Folder TotalCount property as a secondary check.

As this script deletes things (some of which maybe be hard to recover if you don't want them deleted) you should do your own testing and use at your own risk.

I've put a download copy of this script here the code itself looks like

1. ## Get the Mailbox to Access from the 1st commandline argument  
2.   
3. $MailboxName = $args[0]  
4.  
5. ## Load Managed API dll    
6. Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\1.2\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll"    
7.    
8. ## Set Exchange Version    
9. $ExchangeVersion = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2010_SP2    
10.    
11. ## Create Exchange Service Object    
12. $service = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService($ExchangeVersion)    
13.    
14. ## Set Credentials to use two options are availible Option1 to use explict credentials or Option 2 use the Default (logged On) credentials    
15.    
16. #Credentials Option 1 using UPN for the windows Account    
17. $psCred = Get-Credential    
18. $creds = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($psCred.UserName.ToString(),$psCred.GetNetworkCredential().password.ToString())    
19. $service.Credentials = $creds        
20.    
21. #Credentials Option 2    
22. #service.UseDefaultCredentials = $true    
23.    
24. ## Choose to ignore any SSL Warning issues caused by Self Signed Certificates    
25.    
26. ## Code From http://poshcode.org/624  
27. ## Create a compilation environment  
28. $Provider=New-Object Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider  
29. $Compiler=$Provider.CreateCompiler()  
30. $Params=New-Object System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerParameters  
31. $Params.GenerateExecutable=$False  
32. $Params.GenerateInMemory=$True  
33. $Params.IncludeDebugInformation=$False  
34. $Params.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.DLL") | Out-Null  
35.   
36. $TASource=@' 
37.   namespace Local.ToolkitExtensions.Net.CertificatePolicy{ 
38.     public class TrustAll : System.Net.ICertificatePolicy { 
39.       public TrustAll() {  
40.       } 
41.       public bool CheckValidationResult(System.Net.ServicePoint sp, 
42.         System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate cert,  
43.         System.Net.WebRequest req, int problem) { 
44.         return true; 
45.       } 
46.     } 
47.   } 
48. '@   
49. $TAResults=$Provider.CompileAssemblyFromSource($Params,$TASource)  
50. $TAAssembly=$TAResults.CompiledAssembly  
51.  
52. ## We now create an instance of the TrustAll and attach it to the ServicePointManager  
53. $TrustAll=$TAAssembly.CreateInstance("Local.ToolkitExtensions.Net.CertificatePolicy.TrustAll")  
54. [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::CertificatePolicy=$TrustAll  
55.  
56. ## end code from http://poshcode.org/624  
57.    
58. ## Set the URL of the CAS (Client Access Server) to use two options are availbe to use Autodiscover to find the CAS URL or Hardcode the CAS to use    
59.    
60. #CAS URL Option 1 Autodiscover    
61. $service.AutodiscoverUrl($MailboxName,{$true})    
62. "Using CAS Server : " + $Service.url     
63.     
64. #CAS URL Option 2 Hardcoded    
65.    
66. #$uri=[system.URI] "https://casservername/ews/exchange.asmx"    
67. #$service.Url = $uri      
68.    
69. ## Optional section for Exchange Impersonation    
70.    
71. #$service.ImpersonatedUserId = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ImpersonatedUserId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ConnectingIdType]::SmtpAddress, $MailboxName)   
72.   
73. function ConvertId{      
74.     param (  
75.             $OwaId = "$( throw 'OWAId is a mandatory Parameter' )"  
76.           )  
77.     process{  
78.         $aiItem = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.AlternateId        
79.         $aiItem.Mailbox = $MailboxName        
80.         $aiItem.UniqueId = $OwaId     
81.         $aiItem.Format = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.IdFormat]::OwaId        
82.         $convertedId = $service.ConvertId($aiItem, [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.IdFormat]::EwsId)   
83.         return $convertedId.UniqueId  
84.     }  
85. }  
86.  
87. ## Get Empty Folders from EMS  
88.   
89. get-mailboxfolderstatistics $MailboxName | Where-Object{$_.FolderType -eq "User Created" -band $_.ItemsInFolderAndSubFolders -eq 0} | ForEach-Object{  
90.     # Bind to the Inbox Folder  
91.     "Deleting Folder " + $_.FolderPath    
92.     try{  
93.         $folderid= new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId((Convertid $_.FolderId))     
94.         $ewsFolder = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$folderid)       
95.         if($ewsFolder.TotalCount -eq 0){  
96.             $ewsFolder.Delete([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.DeleteMode]::SoftDelete)  
97.             "Folder Deleted"  
98.         }  
99.     }  
100.     catch{  
101.   
102.     }  
103. }