Exchange 2010 – Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration and Junk Folder

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The junk email rules helps Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Web App users to automatically remove any spam that gets past anti-spam filters and reaches the users' mailboxes. With this cmdlet, users and administrators can make changes to the junk email rule that's configured for a specific mailbox.

Adding an email address or domain to the Safe Senders list in Outlook for all of your user mailboxes can be handy for a number of reasons.

Scenario: we want add the email address of an externally generated newsletter from a trusted source to everyone’s “Safe Sender” list so that images within the newsletter were automatically downloaded without requiring the user to click the yellow alert bar.

Exchange 2010 finally filled this void with the Get-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration/Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration cmdlets.

We can use the Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration cmdlet to configure the junk email rule for specific mailboxes so, in order to modify a user’s Safe Senders list, we’ll use the Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration cmdlet.

Microsoft gives us some examples, but they’re pretty limited in their functionality if you want to modify multiple mailboxes.

Turning on the Junk Folder for the User1 mailbox is simply a matter of entering this cmdlet at the Exchange Management Shell:

Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -Identity User1 -Enabled $true

...to disable it:

Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -Identity User1 -Enabled $false

And to enable it for all users in the specified Mailbox Database:

Get-Mailbox -Database <mailbox Database Name> | Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -Enabled $true

It’s actually much easier to use a hash table with the ‘Add’ keyword to modify the TrustedSendersAndDomains property. This allows us to perform the operation with just a single line and without writing a more complicated PowerShell script.

get-Mailbox "ALIAS" | Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -TrustedSendersAndDomains @{Add='[email protected]','domain2.com'}

It also allows us to perform this action on multiple mailboxes at once filtered by Distribution Group:

get-DistributionGroupMember -identity "ALIAS" | Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -TrustedSendersAndDomains @{Add='[email protected]','domain2.com'}

...by Custom Attribute:

get-Mailbox -ResultSize 5000 | Where {$_.CustomAttribute1 -eq "VALUE"} | Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -TrustedSendersAndDomains @{Add='[email protected]','domain2.com'}

...or just for Everyone:

get-Mailbox | Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -TrustedSendersAndDomains @{Add='[email protected]','domain2.com'}

If you want to check what is in the Safe Senders list for any particular user, just use the Get-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration command:

get-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration -identity "ALIAS"

The lesson here? Never limit yourself to Microsoft’s stock examples as there are likely even more flexible ways available.

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UPDATE: While running this command against all user mailboxes in our organization, I received this error on some accounts:

The Junk E-Mail configuration couldn't be set. The user needs to sign in to Outlook Web App before they can modify 
their Safe Senders and Recipients or Blocked Senders lists.



   + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (0:Int32) [Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration], DataSourceOperationException


   + FullyQualifiedErrorId : 44A9456E,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.StoreTasks.SetMailboxJunkEmailConfiguration

The error say that a user must sign in to Outlook Web App before their Junk Email configuration can be configured. That is somewhat misleading though, in that the only requirement is that the user has signed in to Outlook (I’ve tested this with Outlook 2003 & 2010). As it turned out I received the message for new hires that had not yet started, so it was nothing to really worry about.