Clearing Exchange 2003 SMTP Queues

Earlier this week we had a client whose junior sales person decided to do a mail shot to some of their customer base. He wanted to send some attachments with information. The attachments totaled about 5mb in size (the default outgoing size limit had been changed at their request some time ago)

So the sales guy clicked the send button and the 5mb message was submitted to exchange to send out to 150 recipients

See the problem here? The exchange server was busy trying to send over 750MB of email which was stopping everything else from going out

When I logged onto the server and viewed the queues I was a bit that annoyed that I’d have to go into every queue (one per domain), click “find messages”, then “find”, then delete all the offending messages. I knew there must be a better way but decided to look into it later as the problem needed sorting. It took me about half an hour but I cleaned up and all was well

Until the day after.

The same guy did exactly the same thing but to over 200 recipients. After late time I’d suggested he uploaded the attachments to his website and had a link in the email but that advice fell on deaf ears

So I had no wish to go through all the queues again

I found this post by Chrissy LeMaire most helpful. She has a vbscript that you can use to completely wipe out ALL the messages in ALL queues.

I didn’t want to be quite so destructive as there were legitimate messages still in the queue so I made some changes so that the script asks you who sent the message and only deletes the specific messages. It also has a “report” mode which is it a bit like a “are you really sure” message. This will just let you know how many message would have been deleted

Here is the script. I’ve marked my changes so that the script can be returned to it’s original state

On reflection my changes are a bit rough and ready and when I get some more time I may change the WMI query so that it returns just the messages I want instead of returning all the messages and then checking to see which ones to delete though that’s just me being picky I guess

Also take a look at Chrissy’s site. It’s very useful and has been added to my feed list!

'Original Author: Chrissy LeMaire
' Copyright 2003 NetNerds Consulting Group
' Script is provided AS IS with no warranties or guarantees and assumes no liabilities.
' Website: http://www.netnerds.net
' Description: This scripts empties out the entire Exchange queue. USE WITH CAUTION.

Set objWMIExch = GetObject("winmgmts://./root/MicrosoftExchangeV2")
Set objLinksList = objWMIExch.ExecQuery ("Select * from Exchange_SMTPLink")
For each objLinkInst in objLinksList
strSQL = "Select * from Exchange_SMTPQueue where "
strSQL = strSQL & "LinkID='" & objLinkInst.LinkID
strSQL = strSQL & "' and LinkName='" & objLinkInst.LinkName
strSQL = strSQL & "' and ProtocolName='" & objLinkInst.ProtocolName
strSQL = strSQL & "' and VirtualMachine='" & objLinkInst.VirtualMachine
strSQL = strSQL & "' and VirtualServerName='" & objLinkInst.VirtualServerName & "'"
Set objQueuesList = objWMIExch.ExecQuery (strsql)
For each objQueueInst in objQueuesList
i = i +1
If i > 7 And InStr(objQueueInst.QueueName,".") > 0 Then 'make sure its not the built in stuff
strSQL = "Select * from Exchange_QueuedSMTPMessage where " '<-- This class requires that you pass ALL the variables below in the where clause
strSQL = strSQL & "LinkID='" & objLinkInst.LinkID
strSQL = strSQL & "' and LinkName='" & objLinkInst.LinkName
strSQL = strSQL & "' and ProtocolName='" & objLinkInst.ProtocolName
strSQL = strSQL & "' and QueueID='" & objQueueInst.QueueID
strSQL = strSQL & "' and QueueName='" & objQueueInst.QueueName
strSQL = strSQL & "' and VirtualMachine='" & objLinkInst.VirtualMachine
strSQL = strSQL & "' and VirtualServerName='" & objLinkInst.VirtualServerName & "'"
Set objQueuesList1 = objWMIExch.ExecQuery (strsql)
For each objQueueInst1 in objQueuesList1
If i > 7 And InStr(objQueueInst1.QueueName,".") > 0 Then
' Andy's new section 2
if LCASE(objQueueInst1.sender)=txtemailAddress then
mailcounter = mailcounter + 1
if deletemode=6 then
objQueueInst1.DeleteNoNDR
end if
end if
' End of new section 2
End If
Next
End If
Next
Next
' Andy's new section 3
WScript.echo "Operation completed - " & i & " queues scanned - " & mailcounter & " messages processed"
' End of new section 3