Issue with moving multiple items from one outlook folder to another - Powershell - powershell

Question

I am trying to select multiple emails from on outlook inbox folder via mapi addressing and want to move a copy of these emails to another folder in the same inbox.
Unfortunately my script seems to do whatever it wants, sometimes copying 6 emails before stopping with following failure, sometimes stopping right with the first email.
Failure:
... "veeam")} | ForEach-Object {$_.Copy().Move($Namespace.Folders.Item("$ ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : OperationStopped: (:) [ForEach-Object], COMException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.ForEachObjectCommand
I could not find any solution for this and I am sitting here confused since in another mailbox the code works just fine.
Of course I am setting the variables $Mailbox and $TempWorkPath beforehand.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Trying to run the code in a foreach-loop is less performant and ends with the same issue.
About 3 hours of google search did not help me at all.
Just moving the object causes the code to break, probably because of indexiation?
Add-Type -Assembly "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook"
$OutlookSession = New-Object -ComObject Outlook.Application
$Namespace = $OutlookSession.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
$Namespace.Folders.Item("$Mailbox").Folders.Item("Posteingang").Items.Restrict('[UnRead] = True') | Where-Object {($_.Subject -match "ackup") -or ($_.SenderEmailAddress -match "veeam")} | ForEach-Object {$_.Copy().Move($Namespace.Folders.Item("$Mailbox").Folders.Item("Posteingang").Folders.Item("$TempWorkPath"))} | Out-Null
<# Do things with the selected/coppied emails #>
[System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($OutlookSession) | Out-Null
$OutlookSession = $null | Out-Null
In Theory an based on my tests in another folder this should work perfectly fine, create a copy of the email, move it to my folder and afterwards I can do things with it.

Answer 1

Well, I think I found my way around the issue. Running the command in a while loop instead of an foreach loop seems to work better.
$Inbox = $Namespace.Folders.Item("$Mailbox").Folders.Item("Posteingang").Items.Restrict('[UnRead] = True') | Where-Object {($_.Subject -match "ackup") -or ($_.SenderEmailAddress -match "veeam")}
$MailCounter = $Inbox.Count
$HelperForCounting = 0
while ($MailCounter -gt $HelperForCounting)
{
$Inbox[$MailCounter].Copy().Move($Namespace.Folders.Item("$Mailbox").Folders.Item("Posteingang").Folders.Item("$TempWorkPath"))
$MailCounter = $MailCounter - 1
}
Greetings

Answer 2

I also had this issue with processing emails on Outlook. My overall scheme is to process emails folder by folder. I traced the issue to the Emails.getNext() function. My completely uneducated guess is it has something to do with parallel processing of Emails and how it grabs them in ForEach() and getNext(). The problem went away by using the getLast().
Note in the following code it will just move all read emails to archive folder and then some unread emails to corporate dump folder and most unread emails to the unread folder. This is itself just a mutation on the .p0r email script. There is a > $null at the end of the function block is where I originally had it on the ForEach loop and it worked as one would expect, but it does not work on the While loop blocking function. Instead that had to be moved to the location in the move unread section. Still a lot of room for improvement, getting some strange com errors but it will process through an inbox so long as GetLast() email is moved out of the folder.
As for my rationale on the root cause, I noticed that the failure to read a whole inbox is dependent on the size of the inbox. So each run my go through 2/3 of the remaining emails in the inbox.
# OUTLOOK RULES #
#################
# OUTLOOK RULES #
#################
#Import Object Library?
Add-Type -assembly "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook"
# VARIABLES
$index=0;
$pstPath = "C:\YOURPATHHERE"
# DISPLAY INFO
function display( [string]$subject, [string]$color , [string]$out) {
# REQUIRED LENGTH OF STRING
$len = 20
# STRINGS THAT ARE LONGER WILL BE CUT DOWN,
# STRINGS THAT ARE TO SHORT WILL BE MADE LONGER
if ( $subject.length -lt 20 ){
$toadd=20-$subject.length;
for ( $i=0; $i -lt $toadd; $i++ ){
$subject=$subject+" ";
}
$len = $subject.length
}
else { $len = 20 }
$index=$index+1
Write-host -ForegroundColor $color -nonewline " |" ((($subject).ToString()).Substring(0,$len)).ToUpper()
}
# CREATING OUTLOOK OBJECT
$outlook = New-Object -comobject outlook.application
$namespace = $outlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
# GETTING PST FILE THAT WAS SPECIFIED BY THE PSTPATH VARIABLE
$pst = $namespace.Stores | ?{$_.FilePath -eq $pstPath}
# ROOT FOLDER
$pstRoot = $pst.GetRootFolder()
# SUBFOLDERS
$pstFolders = $pstRoot.Folders
$fArchive = $pstFolders.Item("Archive")
# PERSONAL SUBFOLDER
$personal = $pstFolders.Item("Personal")
# INBOX FOLDER
$DefaultFolder = $namespace.GetDefaultFolder(6)
# INBOX SUBFOLDERS
$InboxFolders = $DefaultFolder.Folders
# DELETED ITEMS
$DeletedItems = $namespace.GetDefaultFolder(3)
# EMAIL ITEMS
$Emails = $DefaultFolder.Items
$workingFile = [IO.Path]::GetTempFileName()
# PROCESSING EMAILS
$currentWriteFolder = $pstFolders.Item("Archive")
While ($Emails.count -gt 0) {
$Email = $Emails.GetLast()
#Move all reads into Archive
if (!$Email.Unread) {
$email.move($fArchive) > $null
continue
}
#Filter unread items by sender
$WriteString = $Email.SenderEmailAddress.ToString()
[IO.File]::WriteAllLines($workingFile, $WriteString)
if (Select-String -Path $workingFile -Pattern "company") {
$email.move($currentWriteFolder.Folders.Item("globalcorp"))
continue
}
$email.move($pstFolders.Item("Unread"))
} # > $null
[IO.File]::Delete($workingFile)
Write-host ""