Exchange 2013 Admin Center (EAC) is easily accessible, but it provides quite a limited set of management options when performing bulk actions.
A typical example is creating multiple user mailboxes. Whether you have a list, provided by the HR department, or you are simply building a test lab, using Exchange Admin Center for this task is out of the question (unless you enjoy creating them one by one in EAC). Exchange Management Shell is the choice in this scenario – using a script or a heavy one-liner.
In this video, we start from scratch, creating a CSV file from a list of names generated by Random Name Generator web site.
Then, we discuss the details of our powershell script and how you can modify it according to your needs. Of course, you will see the script in action and the result of Exchange 2013 automatic mailbox distribution.
# Import data from the CSV file and store it in variable “$data”
$data = import-csv $args[0]
# Get the Active Directory FQDN of the current user
# You can specify it explicitly, if needed – ex. $FQDN = “netometer.local”
$FQDN = $env:userdnsdomain
# Cycle through each row from the CSV and feed the column values into variables
# We also encrypt the password, as the “New-Mailbox” command does not accept plain text value
foreach ($i in $data)
{
$first = $i.First
$last = $i.Last
$name = $i.First + ‘ ‘ + $i.Last
$alias = $i.First[0] + $i.Last
$upn = $alias + “@” + $FQDN
$ou = $i.ou
$encryptedpass = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText $i.Password -Force
$resetpass = $false
new-mailbox -Firstname $first -LastName $last -Name $name -UserPrincipalName $upn -OrganizationalUnit $ou -Password $encryptedpass -ResetPasswordOnNextLogon $resetpass
}
You can download the [tip label=”script” style=”1″ href=”https://www.netometer.com/downloads/powershell/bulk-create-mbx.ps1″]bulk-create-mbx.ps1 
[/tip] and [tip label=”CSV file” style=”1″ href=”https://www.netometer.com/downloads/powershell/NetoMeter.csv”]NetoMeter.csv 
[/tip] that we are using in the demo.
[raw]In the following short video 
, we demonstrate how to bulk create mailboxes in Exchange 2013 with this powershell scriptbulk-create-mbx.ps1.[/raw]
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