Connect to Office365/O365 using Powershell

A quick an easy post with details on how to connect your Office 365 (O365) environment to allow management with powershell cmdlets

Make sure you change the value next to -Credential from username@domain.com to the username you need to use to connect

$ex = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -Credential username@domain.com -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell -Authentication basic -AllowRedirection

import-pssession $ex

After executing this command, a popup window will appear for you to enter your password into

You will then receive a couple of warning messages to indicate that your session has been redirected to a slightly different URL, and another about some of the imported commands. These can be safely ignored

WARNING: Your connection has been redirected to the following URI: "https://outlook.office365.com/PowerShell-LiveID?PSVersion=5.1.17763.1852 "

WARNING: The names of some imported commands from the module 'tmp_4kculvlx.2wc' include unapproved verbs that might make them less discoverable. To find the commands with unapproved verbs, run the Import-Module command again with the Verbose parameter. For a

 list of approved verbs, type Get-Verb.

You can then proceed to manage your Office 365 environment with the standard powershell commands - get-mailbox etc.

Enabling Exchange Cmdlets in Powershell

In order to run Exchange Server commands within a Powershell script, the relevant cmdlets need to be 'called' within Powershell.

This is accomplished with the following line, which is found at the start of nearly all of my Powershell scripts.

#Enable Exchange cmdlets
add-pssnapin *exchange* -erroraction SilentlyContinue

If you attempt to run Exchange commands in Powershell (eg. Get-Mailbox) without loading the Exchange cmdlets first, you will get an error similar to the following;


The term 'get-mailbox' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:12
+ get-mailbox <<<< 
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (get-mailbox:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException