[Migrated from MSDN Exchange Dev] Filter Mailboxes on Property 'IsInactiveMailbox'

Question

Note: This case is migrated from MSDN Exchange Server Development forum. Since Exchange Server Development forum mainly discuss issues about Exchange development, and non-developer Exchange has transitioned to Microsoft Q&A for support, we migrated this non-developer question manually to continue the discussion.

Original Post: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/04134158-8e92-4b94-8e83-98213274e42e/filter-mailboxes-on-property-isinactivemailbox?forum=exchangesvrdevelopment

I am trying to filter all ACTIVE mailboxes into a variable for the purpose of examining outlook rules for data exfiltration. Currently, all mailboxes are pulled and even with robustcloudcommand I am waiting days for the script to complete. I have tried:

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter ($_.IsInactiveMailbox -eq '$False')

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited | where {$_.IsInactiveMailbox -eq '$False'}

Using 'where', I get zero results in the data set.

Using 'filter', I get 'Cannot bind parameter 'Filter' to the target. Exception setting "Filter": ""False" is not a recognized filterable property. Valid property names are:'

Then it lists 'isinactivemailbox' as a filterable property. I found a post to sort mailboxes by last login but that result doesn't account for things like staff tha tis on leave of absence.

How can I filter and return my active mailboxes only? Thank you for any help! :)

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~Eric

Answer 1

Ok, I re-read your original post and I think I was confused on what you were asking. Are you saying that a simple get-mailbox includes the inactive ones as well when it shouldn't?

I'm not seeing that.

Try this to make it go faster

Download , install and use the V2 Exo PS Module:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/exchange/connect-to-exchange-online-powershell?view=exchange-ps

Then run these and see what you get:

This should only list active mailboxes

(Get-EXOMailbox -ResultSize unlimited).count  

This should only list active and inactive and be higher than above

(Get-EXOMailbox -ResultSize unlimited -IncludeInactiveMailbox).count  

This should list only inactive mailboxes and be the difference:

(Get-EXOMailbox -ResultSize unlimited -InactiveMailboxOnly).count  

If I am not understanding question correctly, let me know!

Answer 2

We can use the following command to list the inactive mailboxes:

Get-Mailbox -InactiveMailboxOnly | FT DisplayName,PrimarySMTPAddress,WhenSoftDeleted  

Please check this for more details: View a list of inactive mailboxes.

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Answer 3

Thank you that is pulling inactive and active as well.

Answer 4

Correct, at least that is what I thought. I have a count of 20957 when using the get-exomailbox and the count goes to 35604 when i include -includeinactivemailbox.

I think I see where my confusion come from. When we initially did our migration to exchange online we used a service from quadrotech call archive shuttle. This took mailboxes from a 3rd party archive solution and migrated them. I never realized it created onmicrosoft accounts for these. So all of these were showig in my get-mailbox return, but they have no accounts in our AD and they are not using licenses in 365.

So I'm an idiot lol. I appreciate your help. I'll work to remove those onmicrosoft accounts in MSOL and verify they become inactive.