Friday, March 15, 2013

Exclude a single user from a Dynamic Distribution Group in Exchange 2007

By default the Exchange Management Console only shows a fairly limited view of the filtering possibilities for generating Dynamic Distribution Groups. The PowerShell based Exchange Management Shell can be used for much finer grained control of these group filters.

1. Open EMS - Open the start menu and type exchange. Select Exchange Management Shell.
2. Enter the following command: Set-DynamicDistributionGroup -Identity "Group Name" -RecipientFilter {((RecipientType -eq 'UserMailbox') -and -not(Name -like 'Display Name'))}
3. Double check the new filter - Open the filters pane of the group properties in EMC and check that it was updated correctly.

The filter pane in the group properties will now show the full filter rather than the simplified checkbox display.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Shake Your Toner Cartridge

In a story entirely unrelated to the Harlem Shake I was recently almost out of toner on an unbranded cartridge for my Dell 1700n laser printer. Without the time or the resources immediately available to acquire a replacement I opted to just take the cart out, shake it back and forth for ~10 seconds and reinsert it. Voila! >300 prints later and it's still going strong, strong enough that you'd never know it was low on toner. I'm sure it'll still need replacing soon, but as a temporary stopgap I couldn't be happier.