When managing email systems, there are times when you need to identify the oldest email in a mailbox. This information is crucial for making informed decisions, especially when implementing Exchange Retention Policies and determining which emails will be deleted. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of finding the oldest email in an Exchange mailbox using PowerShell commands.

Requirements:

• Access to Exchange Online or On-Premises PowerShell.
• Basic knowledge of PowerShell commands.

Step 1: Launch PowerShell

Begin by launching Exchange Online or On-Premises PowerShell, depending on your email system configuration.
See: Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell with MFA

Step 2: Find the Oldest Email in a Single Mailbox

To find the oldest email in a single mailbox, execute the following command. This command will extract relevant statistics and export them to a CSV file.

PowerShell

Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -ID -IncludeOldestAndNewestItems | Select-Object Identity, Name, FolderPath, ItemsInFolder, FolderSize, OldestItemReceivedDate | Export-Csv C:\O365\MB.csv -NoTypeInformation

Replace <mailboxemailaddress> with the actual email address of the mailbox you want to analyze.

Step 3: Find the Oldest Emails in All Mailboxes

To search for the oldest emails in all mailboxes, use the following command. Please note that this operation might take a considerable amount of time due to the large volume of data being processed.

PowerShell

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | ForEach-Object { Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Id $_ -IncludeOldestAndNewestItems } | Select-Object Identity, Name, FolderPath, ItemsInFolder, FolderSize, OldestItemReceivedDate | Export-Csv $home\desktop\AllMB.csv -NoTypeInformation

Step 4: Find the Oldest Emails in a Subset of Mailboxes

If you want to analyze a specific set of mailboxes, create a text file (input.txt) containing the list of email addresses of these mailboxes. Then, execute the following command:

PowerShell

Get-Content C:\O365\MailBox.txt | ForEach-Object { Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Id $_ -IncludeOldestAndNewestItems } | Select-Object Identity, Name, FolderPath, ItemsInFolder, FolderSize, OldestItemReceivedDate | Export-Csv C:\O365\MailBox.csv -NoTypeInformation

This command reads the list of mailbox email addresses from MailBox.txt and exports the oldest email data to MailBox.csv.

Congratulations! You have successfully found the oldest emails in Exchange mailboxes using PowerShell commands. Feel free to analyze the exported CSV files to make informed decisions about your email retention policies.

Thank you for reading! If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask.