Get email items from mailboxes through powershell - powershell

Question

I need to retrieve email items from outlook from various mailboxes.
I found the below script that works fine for my inbox. But how do i define other mailbox name in the script.
I have many mailboxes and each hour i need to retrieve items from the mailboxes, hence looking out for automation which help save efforts.
Function Get-OutlookInBox
{
<#
.Synopsis
This function returns InBox items from default Outlook profile
.Description
This function returns InBox items from default Outlook profile. It
uses the Outlook interop assembly to use the olFolderInBox enumeration.
It creates a custom object consisting of Subject, ReceivedTime, Importance,
SenderName for each InBox item.
*** Important *** depending on the size of your InBox items this function
may take several minutes to gather your InBox items. If you anticipate
doing multiple analysis of the data, you should consider storing the
results into a variable, and using that.
.Example
Get-OutlookInbox |
where { $_.ReceivedTime -gt [datetime]"5/5/11" -AND $_.ReceivedTime -lt `
[datetime]"5/10/11" } | sort importance
Displays Subject, ReceivedTime, Importance, SenderName for all InBox items that
are in InBox between 5/5/11 and 5/10/11 and sorts by importance of the email.
.Example
Get-OutlookInbox | Group-Object -Property SenderName | sort-Object Count
Displays Count, SenderName and grouping information for all InBox items. The most
frequently used contacts appear at bottom of list.
.Example
$InBox = Get-OutlookInbox
Stores Outlook InBox items into the $InBox variable for further
"offline" processing.
.Example
($InBox | Measure-Object).count
Displays the number of messages in InBox Items
.Example
$InBox | where { $_.subject -match '2011 Scripting Games' } |
sort ReceivedTime -Descending | select subject, ReceivedTime -last 5
Uses $InBox variable (previously created) and searches subject field
for the string '2011 Scripting Games' it then sorts by the date InBox.
This sort is descending which puts the oldest messages at bottom of list.
The Select-Object cmdlet is then used to choose only the subject and ReceivedTime
properties and then only the last five messages are displayed. These last
five messages are the five oldest messages that meet the string.
.Notes
NAME: Get-OutlookInbox
AUTHOR: ed wilson, msft
LASTEDIT: 05/13/2011 08:36:42
KEYWORDS: Microsoft Outlook, Office
HSG: HSG-05-26-2011
.Link
Http://www.ScriptingGuys.com/blog
#Requires -Version 2.0
#>
Add-type -assembly "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook" | out-null
$olFolders = "Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.olDefaultFolders" -as [type]
$outlook = new-object -comobject outlook.application
$namespace = $outlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
$folder = $namespace.getDefaultFolder($olFolders::olFolderInBox)
$folder.items |
Select-Object -Property Subject, ReceivedTime, Importance, SenderName
} #end function Get-OutlookInbox

Answer 1

you could try adding a param block to your script so you can run something like "Get-OutlookInbox -Mailbox ". It would look something like this:
param (
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
ValueFromPipeline=$true,
Position=1)]
[string[]]$Mailbox=$env::USERNAME
)
So just to break it down a little, the actual name of the parameter is "Mailbox" and it is set to a default value that returns the current user running the script. You can override it by specifying one when you run the function. This will also accept a value from pipeline, meaning you can have an array of strings called "$aliases" and then run it like this: $aliases | Get-OutlookInbox