How to find and delete duplicate Outlook emails in file explorer with PowerShell? - windows

Question

Please forgive me, I have little experience with PowerShell, but I know in theory what i need to do.
I have been given a list of 21,000 outlook emails and told to delete duplicates. The server uploaded these incorrectly somehow.The subject of the emails is a randomly generate string so is unique. I need to delete duplicates based on email size and manually opening the email to check that the content is the same. Rather than eyeballing them and comparing them manually which will take me approximately 25 years lol, does anyone know how to do this in PowerShell?
E.g. traverse through Outlook files line by line. IF one file size matches the previous, open both emails. AND Compare first line of email with both emails. IF they both match in terms of file size and content,delete one email. Surely this wouldn't be too difficult to do? Please help me, I cannot fathom looking at 21k emails!!
I've got powershell open and I navigated to the directory which hosts the 21k outlook emails. Please can someone help me? I know i am going to need some sort of loop in there and for 21k files it isn't going to be quick, but eyeballing them and doing it manually will take MUCH MUCH longer, the thought of manually doing it is giving me shivers...
Thanks! Much appreciated!
I am in powershell and navigated to the directory which hosts the 21k emails. I now need to find out how to traverse through line by line, find matching sizes and compare content, IF both are true then delete one file. I am not a programmer and I don't want to mess up by randomly winging it.

Answer 1

I'm not sure I understood everything but this might help you:
$Outlook = New-Object -ComObject Outlook.Application
$Namespace = $Outlook.GetNamespace("MAPI")
$Folder = $Namespace.GetDefaultFolder(6) # 6 is the index for the Inbox folder
$Emails = $Folder.Items
$Emails.Sort("[ReceivedTime]", $true)
$PreviousEmail = $null
foreach ($Email in $Emails) {
if ($PreviousEmail -ne $null -and $Email.Subject -eq $PreviousEmail.Subject -and $Email.ReceivedTime -eq $PreviousEmail.ReceivedTime) {
Write-Host "Deleting duplicate email with Subject:" $Email.Subject "and Received Time:" $Email.ReceivedTime
$Email.Delete()
}
$PreviousEmail = $Email
}
To run this tho, you need to change the directory to the outlook file locations. You can use "cd C:\PATH" or "Set-Location C:\PATH".
Eg:
cd C:\Users\MyUserName\Documents\Outlook\
Give it a try and let me know if works or it errors out. You might need to adjust some lines, I don't have outlook on my PC to test.
Also please do a backup/copy of the folder before running the script, in case it does delete emails it shouldn't.