Essentially, we're looking for a replacement for ExMerge - a simple UI that will allow a user to search for messages and remove those messages out of the recipients mailboxes if mail is found. ExMerge used to make this amazing simple. I know there are PowerShell commands like search-mailbox but as far as i can tell, this requires the use of a destination mailbox.
We've looked into using the GUI New Mailbox Search in the ECP but it appears to only run a report on the mailboxes affected. We need a method to remove the affected mail as well. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335072.aspx
So what I need to know is: Is there a way to query mailboxes for mail with a specific subject line or attachment name but just provide results (e.g. 10 items found, 10 items found in the following mailboxes: , etc.) back to the PowerShell shell instead of having to dump the results to another mailbox and look at them with your eyes?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
[EDIT] - I probably should've stated the post as such if this helps clear up the issue:
This is a long, multi-part question. So the core of my problem is that we have a regularly recurring requirement in our enterprise where people send out emails they're not supposed to. The result is that we have to go through our Exchange sites and purge
the emails that weren't supposed to go out. Previously (in Exchange 2003), we used to use ExMerge to perform this function. So we're left trying to pick up the pieces and replace that lost functionality.
We tried using the New Mailbox Search GUI from the Exchange ECP but this only reports on the information, it does not appear to actually remove the data and there's no apparent way to change that functionality in the GUI.
We also tried using the search-mailbox and new-mailboxsearch cmdlets to perform this functionality but the new process has made it horribly in-depth compared to the old ExMerge GUI.
As a result, I've been tasked with coming up with a stream-lined solution to fix this problem. I'm in the process of creating GUI using PowerShell to sit on top of the PowerShell cmdlets so the user has an easier/more clear-cut way to search for a message based
off of subject line or attachment name and then, return if any mail is found, and then prompt the user to validate the emails and detele them accordingly.
I currently have the process working where the mail is searched for, but the users have to log into the SearchResults mailbox to see if there is any mail returned. We'd like to make this more programatic where the search could just return an object or text-based
result stating the mailboxes the mail was found in and then delete that mail if it visually meets the criteria. Essentially removing the need to mount the mailbox, assign permissions, and look in the mailbox for the contents to see if they're valid.
Does anyone have any experience with this and might be able to help me with these questions? Thank you in advance!