Try-Catch-Finally not working with Send-Mailmessage in PowerShell script - powershell

Question

I'm using try-catch-finally blocks in my account expiration notification email and the if condition in the finally block isn't considered:
Write-Host $sName " : Selected to receive email: password will expire in "$days
if (($emailaddress) -ne $null) {
try {
Send-Mailmessage -smtpServer $SMTPServer -from $MailSender -to $emailaddress -subject $subject2 -body $EmailBody -bodyasHTML -priority High -Encoding $textEncoding -ErrorAction Stop
}
catch {
write-host "Error: Could not send email to $recipient via $smtpServer"
$sent = "Send fail"
$countfailed++
}
finally {
if ($error.Count -eq 0) {
write-host "Sent email for $sName to $emailaddress"
$countsent0++
}
}
} else {
Write-Host "$dName ($sName) has no email address."
$sent = "No"
$countnotsent++
}
Expecting $countsent0 to increment and $sent to be set to the appropriate message. The catch block works ($countfailed increments and $sent is set to "Send fail"). The last else statement after the finally block works as well (if there is no email address for the account $countnotsent increments and $sent is set to "No").

Answer 1

The automatic $Error variable is a running log of all errors that have occurred in the entire session so far, so unless you run $Error.Clear() beforehand, you may get false positives with if ($error.Count -eq 0) { ... }
However, since you may not want to erase this log for the entire session, consider using a simple Boolean variable to indicate whether an error was caught or not.
A simplified example:
$countsent0 = 0
$ok = $false # Helper Boolean variable.
try {
1 / 0 # Simulate an error that can be caught.
$ok = $true # At the end of this block, signal that no error occurred.
}
catch {
Write-Warning 'oops!'
}
finally {
if ($ok) { $countsent0++; Write-Host 'All''s well'. }
}
"`$countsent0: $countsent0"
However, given that your catch block doesn't abort execution, you don't even need a finally block:
$countsent0 = 0
try {
1 / 0 # Simulate an error that can be caught.
# Getting here implies success.
$countsent0++
}
catch {
Write-Warning 'oops!'
}
"`$countsent0: $countsent0"