Exchange Online - Get-UserPhoto - how to catch non terminating error? - powershell

Question

I'm trying to export a list of all users with no photo from our Exchange Online account using powershell. I cannot get it to work and have tried various methods.
Get-UserPhoto returns this exception when there is no profile present.
Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.UserPhotoNotFoundException: There is no photo stored here.
First of all I tried use Errorvariable against the command but received:
A variable that cannot be referenced in restricted language mode or a Data section is being referenced. Variables that can be referenced include the following: $PSCulture, $PSUICulture, $true, $false, and $null.
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (:) [], RuntimeException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : VariableReferenceNotSupportedInDataSection
+ PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com
Next I tried try, catch but the non-terminating error never calls the catch despite various methods followed online about setting $ErrorActionPreference first of all.
Any ideas ? Here is the script:
$UserCredential = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
$timestamp = $timestamp = get-date -Format "dd/M/yy-hh-mm"
$outfile = "c:\temp\" + $timestamp + "UserswithoutPhotos.txt"
$resultslist=#()
$userlist = get-user -ResultSize unlimited -RecipientTypeDetails usermailbox | where {$_.accountdisabled -ne $True}
Foreach($user in $userlist)
{
try
{
$user | get-userphoto -erroraction stop
}
catch
{
Write-Host "ERROR: $_"
$email= $user.userprincipalname
$name = $user.DisplayName
$office = $user.office
write-host "User photo not found...adding to list : $name , $email, $office"
$resultslist += $user
}
}
$resultslist | add-content $outfile
$resultslist

Answer 1

PowerShell's error handling is notoriously tricky, especially so with cmdlets that use implicit remoting via a locally generated proxy script module.
The following idiom provides a workaround based on temporarily setting $ErrorActionPreference to Stop globally (of course, you may move the code for restoring the previous value outside the foreach loop), which ensures that even functions from different modules see it:
try {
# Temporarily set $ErrorActionPreference to 'Stop' *globally*
$prevErrorActionPreference = $global:ErrorActionPreference
$global:ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'
$user | get-userphoto
} catch {
Write-Host "ERROR: $_"
$email= $user.userprincipalname
$name = $user.DisplayName
$office = $user.office
write-host "User photo not found...adding to list : $name, $email, $office"
$resultslist += $user
} finally {
# Restore the previous global $ErrorActionPreference value
$global:ErrorActionPreference = $prevErrorActionPreference
}
As for why this is necessary:
Functions defined in modules do not see the caller's preference variables - unlike cmdlets, which do.
The only outside scope that functions in modules see is the global scope.
For more information on this fundamental problem, see this GitHub issue.

Answer 2

You can throw your own error like so:
try {
$error.Clear()
$user | Get-UserPhoto
if ($error[0].CategoryInfo.Reason -eq "UserPhotoNotFoundException") {throw "UserPhotoNotFoundException" }
} catch {
#code
}