In today’s post, I am going to discuss a very flexible yet simple technique I use to accomplish bulk administration tasks in PowerShell using the import-CSV and the ForEach-Object cmdlets. In today’s example, we will be looking at bulk imports of Mail Contacts (New-MailContact) in Exchange. The task itself could be anything however the concept here remains the same.
The first thing we need to determine is which parameters are required for the New-MailContact cmdlet. To do this use Get-Help New-MailContact. From the results, we see that -ExternalEmailAddress and -Name are required parameters. At a minimum, our CSV needs to include data for these two fields.
Next, build the CSV. I typically name the headers to match the parameter names I plan to use during the import. This simplifies the syntax later however matching the header names to the parameter names is not a requirement.
In this example, I'll save the file as c:\users.CSV. If creating the CSV in Excel be sure to change Save as type to CSV (Comma delimited).
Next, verify your CSV imports successfully by running import-CSV c:\users.CSV. If any errors are found in your CSV, resolve them before moving forward.
Next pipe the results of import-CSV to ForEach-Object and specify the action to take for each object within {}. In this case, import-CSV C:\users.CSV | ForEach-Object {New-MailContact}. Now, at a minimum, add the required parameters as part of New-MailContact and specify the values found in the CSV by using $_. followed by the column header name (-Name $_.FirstName). The final syntax should look something like this.
import-csv “C:\users.csv” | ForEach-Object {New-MailContact -name $_.FirstName –FirstName $_.FirstName –LastName $_.LastName -ExternalEmailAddress $_.ExternalAddress -OrganizationalUnit $_.OrganizationalUnit -Displayname $_.FirstName}
That is it! A very simple yet versatile way to complete bulk administration tasks in almost any environment using Import-CSV coupled with ForEach-Object.
Technology is changing constantly. Please note that technical information published in the BITS blog may be inaccurate if posted prior to 2022.