Get-DistributionGroupMember Recursively

I had a need to get distribution group members for a specific group. Most people seem to install the free “ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory” from Quest Software when they are facing a task such as this.

With the Quest “ActiveRoles Management Shell”, you can do this like “Get-QadGroupMember <group name>–Indirect”

I’m kind of contrary, and so I wanted to do the same thing with the Exchange Management Shell that came with our Exchange 2007 installation. So, I created the script shown here. Save it as get-exgrouprecurse.ps1.

Run it as:

get-exgrouprecurse -group <group name>

or get-exgrouprecurse <group name>

1. #####################################
2. #                                   #
3. # Script to retreive group members  #  
4. #                                   #
5. #    Karl Mitschke March 7 2008     #
6. #                                   #
7. #####################################
8.  
9. ######################################
10. #  heavily modified from recipe 7.3  #
11. #   in 'Active Directory Cookbook'   #
12. #          by Robbie Allen           #
13. ######################################
14.  
15. #requires -pssnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.Admin
16. param($group)
17. $UnknownGroup = @{}
18. function DisplayMembers($group)
19. {
20.     $SubGroup = @{}
21.     $AllMembers = @()
22.     if(!$group)
23.     {
24.         $group = Read-Host "Enter the groups display name"
25.     }
26.     if ($group.Contains("'"))
27.     {
28.         $group = $group.Replace("'",'"')
29.     }
30.     if ($group -eq "/?")
31.     {
32.         Write-Host "Usage:"
33.         Write-Host ""
34.         Write-Host "get-exgrouprecurse -group <group name>"
35.         Write-Host ""
36.         Write-Host "or get-exgrouprecurse <group name>"
37.         Write-Host "Returns an object containing the group member, and the group name."
38.         break
39.     }
40.     
41.     $validate = Get-Group $group
42.     if ($validate.RecipientTypeDetails.ToString() -match "mail")
43.     {
44.         $searchGroup = Get-DistributionGroupMember $group
45.         if ($searchGroup)
46.         {    
47.             foreach ($member in $searchGroup)
48.             {
49.                 $membertype = $member.RecipientTypeDetails
50.                 if($membertype -match "Group")
51.                 {
52.                     $samname = $member.SamAccountName.ToString()
53.                     if ($SubGroup.ContainsKey($samname) -eq $true)
54.                     {
55.                         Write-Output "^ already seen group member (stopping to avoid loop)"
56.                     }
57.                      else
58.                     {
59.                         $SubGroup.Add($samname,$member.DisplayName.ToString())
60.                     }
61.                 }    
62.                 else
63.                 {
64.                     if($member.PrimarySmtpAddress -and $member.RecipientTypeDetails -notcontains "group")
65.                     {
66.                         $obj = new-object psObject
67.                         $obj | Add-Member -membertype noteproperty -Name GroupMember -Value $member.name
68.                         $obj | Add-Member -MemberType noteproperty -Name GroupName -Value $group
69.                         $AllMembers += $obj
70.                     }                    
71.                 }
72.             }
73.         }
74.         else
75.         {
76.             $UnknownGroup.add($group,1)
77.         }
78.         if($SubGroup.Values.Count -gt 0)
79.         {
80.             foreach ($subGroup in $SubGroup.values)
81.             {
82.                 DisplayMembers $subGroup
83.             }
84.         }
85.         if ($UnknownGroup.Keys.Count -gt 0)
86.         {
87.             foreach ($LostGroup in $UnknownGroup.keys)
88.             {
89.                 $obj = new-object psObject
90.                 $obj | Add-Member -membertype noteproperty -name GroupMember -Value "Cannot enumerate group"
91.                 $obj | Add-Member -MemberType noteproperty -Name GroupName -Value $LostGroup
92.                 $AllMembers += $obj
93.             }
94.             $UnknownGroup.Clear()
95.         }    
96.     }    
97.     else
98.     {
99.         Write-Output "$group does not appear to be mail enabled."
100.     }
101.     Write-Output $AllMembers
102. }
103. DisplayMembers $group