Are emails deleted forever in Exchange? Obviously if you delete an email the normal way, it will be put in the "Deleted Items" folder inside your mailbox. But what happens if you delete them even from there? Or straight hard-delete ... [Read More]

There are scenarios where we need to know if an email address already exists inside the organization. At first glance it might not be obvious what object has a specific email address, as in Exchange any mail enabled objects can ... [Read More]

When data is deleted from an Exchange database, the size of the actual EDB file does not decrease.Imagine the following situation: your server runs out of disk space, so you decide to move a few mailboxes away from the database, ... [Read More]

This script lists the database sizes in our environment. Not only the used space is retrieved, but the whitespace and the number of mailboxes is displayed in each databases as well. When data is deleted from a database - either ... [Read More]

From time to time performing maintenance on a DAG member server might be necessary. For example, cumulative updates for Exchange are released quarterly, installing them requires stopping services and rebooting the server. During the process we want the mail flow, ... [Read More]

As a rule of thumb, it's a good practice to place the Exchange databases in a dedicated location. By default, in Exchange 2013, 2016 and 2019 both the EDB file (the database itself) and the log files are created under:C:\Program ... [Read More]

It this article we'll create basic, single site Exchange 2019 DAG (Database Availability Group). We already installed two mailbox servers with the same specifications (detailed here). Each of them has a single database configured already, MAIL has DB01 and MAIL2 ... [Read More]

Export a CSV list of all the mailboxes with names and sizes in a fully numeric format, so they can be ordered, summed, etc. The script works on Office365 and on-prem servers as well ... [Read More]

Do you want to automate distribution group creation, making your job easier? With this script you'll be able to mass-create distribution groups. It takes a simple text file as an input that contains a list of delivery group names, and ... [Read More]

Office365 is increasingly popular among businesses as a managed email service with a plethora of features and competitive pricing. The best and most efficient way to administer your Exchange Online tenant is via Exchange PowerShell. It comes with no surprise ... [Read More]

In our previous article we discussed enforced TLS with Exchange. More precisely with on-premises Exchange servers. We established that Exchange uses opportunistic TLS, meaning it prefers encryption but it is not enforced if the other party only supports plain SMTP ... [Read More]

Most of the time administrators manage distribution group memberships. But it is absolutely possible for selected users to add/remove group members as needed, using simply their Outlook client. Before You Begin - Enabling MyDistributionGroupManagement
In our example a user called ... [Read More]

This guide is for on-premises Exchange deployments. If you are interested in enforced TLS on Office365 tenants, please click HERE Opportunistic Exchange - like most modern email systems - has the facility to transfer email messages encrypted. It is to ... [Read More]

Exchange - like most of the other email systems - limits the maximum size of incoming and outgoing messages. There are three layers where these limits can be set: system-wide, on the send- and receive connectors and on individual mailboxes ... [Read More]

Huge Logs Sometimes the Exchange server runs out of space. As it happens often, the transaction log files use up all the free space, causing the transport service to stop as there is no more room to write messages to ... [Read More]

Custom commands John needs to access Exchange PowerShell a lot. He's tired of logging in the actual Exchange server all the time, he prefers to use his local computer to run cmdlets and manage mailboxes. He created a script, called ... [Read More]

Installation In Exchange Online DKIM is a built-in service, but on an on-prem Exchange 2019 deployment we need a 3rd party application to add this functionality to our Exchange infrastructure. In this guide we use Stefan Profanter's excellent dkim-exchange application ... [Read More]

Spam messages have become a huge issue. They are both annoying, flooding our mailboxes with unneeded content and they are a security risk too, as many of them contain links to malicious websites or even viruses. To fight spamming SPF, ... [Read More]

You have a new Exchange installation. You've just clicked on the Setup Finished window, lean back in your chair and sip on your steamy coffee, saying to yourself: great, now I have a mail server, I could start setting up ... [Read More]

Our local diner, AlwaysHot Café hired us to build a mail server. They have a small network that consists of a switch and a firewall with a single static public IP. After discussing our options we decided to go with ... [Read More]

Making the PowerShell connection to the remote Exchange Online Office365 servers and connecting to an on premises server that is local to the organization are slightly different. Connect to Office365 Connecting to Office365 consists of three different, separate connections. One ... [Read More]

If you desperately need an SSL certificate signed by a publicly trusted CA, and you want it for free, Let’s Encrypt is certainly an option. They are valid for 3 months, and even though linux boxes are equipped to request ... [Read More]

These days it’s a common scenario to see a company acquiring another, and having both organizations hosting their email service in the cloud using Office 365. Unfortunately Microsoft doesn’t provide us with easy to use tools - and ways - ... [Read More]