Category Archives: Exchange 2013

Exchange 2013

Rebuild Exchange 2013 Search Indexes

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1) Stop the following services:

Microsoft Exchange Search
Microsoft Exchange Search Host Controller

2) Locate the existing index directory folders.

They should be in the same path as the mailbox database with a GUID and word ‘Single’ at the end. With both services stopped, rename the GUID folder to GUID_OLD.

3) Restart the 2 services:

Microsoft Exchange Search
Microsoft Exchange Search Host Controller

The GUID folders should be recreated and reindexing of the databases started. It will take a fair amount of time for the rebuild. You can issue the following command to check the index status:

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus

Exchange 2013

Exchange 2013 – Redirect OWA to HTTPS/SSL

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You can make it easier on your webmail users by automatically redirecting requests for http://owa.mailserver.com to https://owa.mailserver.com pretty easily using IIS Manager.

1) Open IIS Manager, expand Sites, and then click Default Web Site.

2) Double-click HTTP Redirect  and select the Redirect requests to this destination check box. Enter the full destination URL (i.e. https://owa.mailserver.com/owa)

3) Under Redirect Behavior, select the Only redirect requests to content in this directory, select Found (302) as the status code, and click Apply.

4) Click on Default Web Site to take you back to the features view, and double-click SSL Settings. Uncheck the Require SSL box.

5) Open command prompt as administrator and run IISRESET.

Open a new browser and test going to http://mail.mailserver.com to see if it redirects you to https://mail.mailserver.com/owa automatically.

NOTE: I have seen issues with these changes not taking effect immediately, even if you follow the above 5 steps to a tee. The problem lies with the web.config file not updating correctly. If you’re sure you’ve done the above steps correctly and it’s still not redirecting properly, browse to C:\inetpub\wwwroot. Rename the web.config file to web.config.old. Run IISRESET and try it again. The file will recreate/rebuild itself and redirection should then work. It also appears that in some instances, applying any of the Exchange Cumulative Updates, will break the redirection making you have to re-perform this process.

Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, Powershell

Exchange 2010 – List Users/Mailboxes That Have Forwarding or Forwarding Rules

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Trying to trace how a message came into a users mailbox can be a pain, when it is auto-forwarded via a rule in OWA, to a mailbox that has forwarding enabled, to another mailbox that is redirecting all messages. The easiest way to track this down is to query for which mailboxes and users are forwarding what to where:

Get list of users who have forwarding enabled on their accounts:
Get-Mailbox -Filter { ForwardingAddress -like “*” } | Where-Object { $_.ForwardingAddress -like “*” } | Select-Object Name,ForwardingAddress

 

Get list of users who have forwarding rules configured in their mailboxes:
ForEach ($m in (Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited)) { Get-InboxRule -Mailbox $m.DistinguishedName | where { $_.ForwardTo } | fl MailboxOwnerID,Name,ForwardTo }

Get list of users who have redirects configured on their mailboxes:
ForEach ($m in (Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited)) { Get-InboxRule -Mailbox $m.DistinguishedName | where {$_.ReDirectTo} | fl MailboxOwnerID,Name,RedirectTo }