Vfrdtyky

I'm trying to export a list of all users with no photo from our Exchange Online account using powershell. I cannot get it to work and have tried various methods.

Get-UserPhoto returns this exception when there is no profile present.

Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.UserPhotoNotFoundException: There is no photo stored here.

First of all I tried use Errorvariable against the command but received:

A variable that cannot be referenced in restricted language mode or a Data section is being referenced. Variables that can be referenced include the following: $PSCulture, $PSUICulture, $true, $false, and  $null.

+ CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (:) , RuntimeException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : VariableReferenceNotSupportedInDataSection

+ PSComputerName        : outlook.office365.com

Next I tried try, catch but the non-terminating error never calls the catch despite various methods followed online about setting $ErrorActionPreference first of all.

Any ideas ? Here is the script:

 $UserCredential = Get-Credential

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

Import-PSSession $Session 



$timestamp = $timestamp = get-date -Format "dd/M/yy-hh-mm"

$outfile = "c:temp" + $timestamp + "UserswithoutPhotos.txt"









$resultslist=@()

$userlist = get-user -ResultSize unlimited -RecipientTypeDetails usermailbox | where {$_.accountdisabled -ne $True}





Foreach($user in $userlist)

{

    try

    {



        $user | get-userphoto -erroraction stop 

    }

    catch

    {

        Write-Host "ERROR: $_"

        $email= $user.userprincipalname

        $name = $user.DisplayName

        $office = $user.office

        write-host "User photo not found...adding to list : $name , $email, $office" 

        $resultslist += $user



    }

}

$resultslist | add-content $outfile 

$resultslist

PowerShell's error handling is notoriously tricky, especially so with cmdlets that use implicit remoting via a locally generated proxy script module.

The following idiom provides a workaround based on temporarily setting $ErrorActionPreference to Stop globally (of course, you may move the code for restoring the previous value outside the foreach loop), which ensures that even functions from different modules see it:

try {



  # Temporarily set $ErrorActionPreference to 'Stop' *globally*

  $prevErrorActionPreference = $global:ErrorActionPreference

  $global:ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'



  $user | get-userphoto



} catch {



    Write-Host "ERROR: $_"

    $email= $user.userprincipalname

    $name = $user.DisplayName

    $office = $user.office

    write-host "User photo not found...adding to list : $name, $email, $office" 

    $resultslist += $user



} finally {  



  # Restore the previous global $ErrorActionPreference value

  $global:ErrorActionPreference = $prevErrorActionPreference



}

As for why this is necessary:

• Functions defined in modules do not see the caller's preference variables - unlike cmdlets, which do.




• The only outside scope that functions in modules see is the global scope.

For more information on this fundamental problem, see this GitHub issue.

You can throw your own error like so:

try {

    $error.Clear()

    $user | Get-UserPhoto 

    if ($error[0].CategoryInfo.Reason -eq "UserPhotoNotFoundException") {throw "UserPhotoNotFoundException" }

} catch {

    #code

}