How to Hide a Mailbox from Exchange’s Global Address List

Good thing I fired up an Exchange server this week’s for my PowerShell class. Here is a quick answer to a problem one of the my class attendees had. How to hide someone from the Global Address List (GAL) using PowerShell. In the Exchange Admin Center, you can configure this in the user’s mailbox general properties.

We had a discussion about what is in the GUI and what is in PowerShell. The direction that Microsoft is moving is a GUI free environment, at least on the servers. PowerShell is designed to do what the GUI can, and cannot do. We simply need to find the path. Fortunately, the path to success on this one was simple.

1 2	Get-Mailbox -Identity jyoder \| Set-Mailbox -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled $True

Line 1 will get the mailbox object of the user in question and pipe the object to line 2.

Line 2 uses the Set-Mailbox cmdlet and it’s HiddenFromAddressListEnabled property. When set to $True, the address is hidden. Let’s take a look at the results in Outlook.

Before executing this code, you can see that I was able to successfully find my email address in the GAL.

And this is the result after.

If you try to set the property to a setting that it already has, you will receive this message:

WARNING: The command completed successfully but no settings of 'Adatum.com/Users/Jason A. Yoder' have been modified.

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Sticky Key problem between Windows Server 2012 and LogMeIn

This week I instructed my first class using Windows Server 2012 accessed via LogMeIn and discovered a Sticky Key problem every time you press the Shift key. Here is my solution to resolve this. First off, in the Preferences of LogMeIn for the connection to the Windows Server, click General . Change the Keyboard and mouse priority to Host side user and click Apply at the bottom. On the Windows 2012 server, open the Control Panel – Ease of Access – Change how your keyboard works . Uncheck Turn on Sticky Keys . Click Set up Sticky Keys . Uncheck Turn on Sticky Keys when SHIFT is pressed five times . Click OK twice. If you are using Windows Server 2012 as a Hyper-V host, you will need to redo the Easy of Use settings on each guest operating system in order to avoid the Sticky Key Problem. Updated Information: March 20, 2013 If you continue to have problems, Uncheck Turn on Filter Keys .

Where did a User’s Account Get Locked Out?

Updated: May 15, 2015 When this article was originally published, two extra carriage returns were add causing the code to malfunction. The code below is correct. My client for this week’s PowerShell class had a really interesting question. They needed to know where an account is being locked out at. OK, interesting. Apparently users hop around clients and forget to log off, leading to eventual lock out of their accounts. The accounts can be unlocked, but are then relocked after Active Directory replication. This problem is solved in two parts. The first one is to modify the event auditing on the network. The second part is resolved with PowerShell. The first part involves creating a group policy that will encompass your Domain Controllers. In this GPO, make these changes. Expand Computer Configuration \ Policies \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Advanced Audit Policy Configuration \ Audit Policies \ Account Management Double click User Account Management C...

How to run GPResult on a remote client with PowerShell

In the past, to run the GPResult command, you would need to either physically visit this client, have the user do it, or use and RDP connection. In all cases, this will disrupt the user. First, you need PowerShell remoting enabled on the target machine. You can do this via Group Policy . Open PowerShell and type this command. Invoke-Command –ScriptBlock {GPResult /r} –ComputerName <ComputerName> Replace <ComputerName> with the name of the target. Remember, the target needs to be online and accessible to you.

Jason Yoder, MCT

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