Use Power. Shell to Data Mine Your Outlook Inbox Hey, Scripting Guy Blog. Summary Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, shows how to use Windows Power. Shell to data mine your Microsoft Outlook Inbox. Hey, Scripting Guy I was talking to my boss the other day, and he made a rather interesting observation. He said that if I send four or five emails to a person within a four or five minute period, I should probably have picked up the phone and made a telephone callit would have taken less time, and been more efficient. You know, I believe my boss is completely correct at least on this one particular point. I was then wondering how much time I spend emailing people who have no impact on my job. I mean, the people on my team with whom I am supposed to collaborate should be my most frequent contacts. Nevertheless, I am beginning to suspect that is not the case. I am afraid that I am wasting too much time corresponding with people who have no impact on my job performance at all. These time wasters are leeching resources from my team at a time when we are already shorthanded. However, I need documentation to take back to my boss for proof. Can I use Windows Power. Shell to query my Microsoft Outlook Inbox to retrieve with whom I am in most frequent contact Information about frequency of contact would be nice to know, but right now I need something actionable to take to the boss. JB Hello JB, Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. In the week following the North American Tech. Ed 2. 01. 1 event in Atlanta, Georgia, my routine still eludes me. Outlook is the free email and calendar service that helps you stay on top of what matters and get things done. File or delete hundreds of emails from your inbox in. Get more done with partner apps and services Connect to your favorite apps and services, including Facebook, Dropbox, PayPal, Uber, Boomerang, and more. Find a great. Sign In with your Microsoft account to get things done and have more fun. Creating and using a Microsoft account gives you easy access to all things digital. Get a free email account from Yahoo Mail. Your email comes with 1000 GB of free storage, powerful spam and security features, easy to use tools to help manage your. Help for all Office apps. Set up your Office 365 subscription. Find howto articles and video tutorials. Contact our Answer Techs for assisted support. There is still a ton of email in my Inbox crying for attention, and last weeks meetings are clamoring for my time to reschedule. The nice thing about my Windows 7 phone is that I was able to answer all the really important stuff last week when I was at Tech. Ed. For me, the best thing about Tech. Ed is the chance to meet with people and to talk about Windows Power. Shell. It is fantastic to meet people who have been reading the Hey Scripting Guy Blog for years and to talk to people about their scripting needs. One of the really cool things that happened is Microsoft Windows Power. MSDNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.msdn.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/01/44/28/metablogapi/2744.clip_image014_6BBAED43.png' alt='How To Get To Inbox On Microsoft Account' title='How To Get To Inbox On Microsoft Account' />Shell MVP, Shane Hoey one of the master minds behind Dr. Scripto TV, sent the Scripting Wife and I a couple bags of Tim Tams via Steve Molkington aka The Molk. Here is a picture of the handover. And so, I am watching email on my laptop, monitoring Twitter on one monitor, and playing around with the Outlook automation model on another monitor. Meanwhile, I am munching on a fresh Tim Tam and sipping a cup of Earl Grey teayes, it looks like I am getting back into a routine after all. Rather than write a Windows Power. How To Get To Inbox On Microsoft Account' title='How To Get To Inbox On Microsoft Account' />Shell script that is limited in the way it exposes data, I decided to write a function that returns a custom object from the Inbox. The easiest way to work with the function is via the Windows Power. Shell ISE. I open the file that contains the Get Outlook. Inbox function and run it once inside the Windows Power. Shell ISE. This places the function onto the function drive and makes it available to me within my Windows Power. Shell ISE session. I then go to the command window, and I type my commands. The first thing I do is call the Get Outlook. Inbox function and store the output in a variable called inbox. This allows me to work with the Inbox content in an easy fashion without needing to query the Inbox over and over again. I can then pipe the inbox contents to other Windows Power. Shell cmdlets to process the results. This technique is shown in the in the following image. An example of looking in the Inbox for a list of users to whom I correspond is shown here. I first store the email items from my Inbox into a variable, and then I pipe the Inbox information to the Group Object cmdlet to group the emails together. I then sort them by the frequency of contact. Get Outlook. In. Boxinbox Group Object Property sender. Name No. Element Sort Object count. The command and its associated output are shown in the following image. If you need to see which email in the Inbox was received after a specific date, you can pipe the Inbox email to Where Object and examine the Received. Time property. The cool thing about this code is that Windows Power. Shell automatically converts the string 52. Date. Time object. Remember that I stored the results of the Get Outlook. Inbox function into the inbox variable. Received. Time gt 52. If I am curious to see if I have received any email about the 2. Scripting Games, I can quickly do a search for the number 2. This is shown here. Where Object. Remember, that I am working interactively in the command window in my Windows Power. Shell ISE. I might not really want to type full command names. Instead, I may prefer to type short commands aliases. For example, I might want to shorten the command that I used to group and sort the users. This is the long form of the command. Get Outlook. In. Boxinbox Group Object Property sender. Name No. Element Sort Object count A shorter form of the command is shown here. You will notice that I do not store the results into a variable. In addition, I use the group alias for Group Object and a partial parameter name no for No. Element. Get Outlook. In. Box group sendername no sort count. As you can see in the following image, the command and output work well. The Get Outlook. Inbox function is shown here Get Outlook. In. Box function. Function Get Outlook. In. Box  lt   . Synopsis    This function returns In. Box items from default Outlook profile  . Description    This function returns In. Box items from default Outlook profile. It    uses the Outlook interop assembly to use the ol. Folder. In. Box enumeration. It creates a custom object consisting of Subject, Received. Time, Importance,    Sender. Name for each In. Box item.     Important depending on the size of your In. Box items this function    may take several minutes to gather your In. Box items. If you anticipate     doing multiple analysis of the data, you should consider storing the     results into a variable, and using that. Example    Get Outlook. Inbox     where. Received. Time gt datetime551. AND. Received. Time lt     datetime51. Download Crack For Cricket 07. Displays Subject, Received. Time, Importance, Sender. Name for all In. Box items that    are in In. Box between 551. Example    Get Outlook. Inbox Group Object Property Sender. Name sort Object Count     Displays Count, Sender. Name and grouping information for all In. Box items. The most    frequently used contacts appear at bottom of list. Example    In. Box Get Outlook. Inbox    Stores Outlook In. Box items into the In. Box variable for further    offline processing. Example    In. Box Measure Object. Displays the number of messages in In. Box Items  . Example    In. Box where. Scripting Games      sort Received. Time Descending select subject, Received. Time last 5     Uses In. Box variable previously created and searches subject field    for the string 2. Scripting Games it then sorts by the date In. Box.     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 Received. Time    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 Outlook. Inbox    AUTHOR ed wilson, msft    LASTEDIT 0.