Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Add Path to Exchange Scripts to Path Variable

Hi folks,

As you know when Exchange 2010 and later is installed on your Windows server it comes with a bunch of scripts that are used for configuration and maintenance of Exchange Server. They are usually stored in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v15\Scripts (for Exchange 2013/2016) or in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v14\Scripts (for Exchange 2010). I have slightly covered this subject in this blog post.

In order to run them you will navigate to the above folder or you can access them via $exscripts variable from Exchange Management Shell.

To simplify access to scripts you can add the folder where scripts are located to the system variable named Path. As you well know it is usually done by accessing System Variables section in the advanced properties of the system.

To make this process faster it can be achieved by executing the below script. Firstly, it's worthy to mention that directories in Path variable are stored in the Path value of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment registry key.



The script extracts list of folders in the Path value and stores it in the $oldpath variable. Then it creates new variable $newPath which consists of all directories from the $oldPath and folder where Exchange scripts are stored. After this Path value in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment’ is updated with all the directories stored in the $newPath variable.

The code will look like below.

$oldPath=(Get-ItemProperty -Path ‘Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment’ -Name PATH).Path

$newPath=$oldPath+’;C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\v15\Scripts’

Set-ItemProperty -Path ‘Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment’ -Name PATH –Value $newPath



Please note that I have tested this script with elevate privileges. And I recommend you running it under the same. After script execution you will need to restart the system and it will do the magic.


After restart just start your EMS and type first couple letters of any of Exchange scripts (for example RedistributeActiveDatabases.ps1) and hit Tab button. EMS should resolved it as below:



Enjoy!


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