Delete OST files from all users profiles

Content Authoring
1

Good morning Everyone,
I was hoping to find a topic on this, but I have had no luck.

My end goal is to delete *.OST files within the user profiles on shared computers.

I have a powershell script that works. I was hoping to either integrate it into a FixLet or create a FixLet to complete the task.

Here is the powershell I have ran with success:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

$users = Get-ChildItem c:\users

foreach ($user in $users){

$folder = “C:\users” + $user +"\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook"
$folderpath = test-path -Path $folder

if($folderpath)
{

Get-ChildItem $folder -filter *.ost | where-object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).Addminutes(-1))} | remove-item
Write-Output “Deleted OST file for $user”
}

else{

Write-Output “OST file doesn’t exist or meet criteria for $user”

}
}

I am sure this can be cleaned up some or made more simple.
I have attempted to use the template that @jgstew has posted. https://bigfix.me/fixlet/details/3860

Thank you for the input

1 Like
2

Looks like your curly braces are getting parsed as Relevance Substitution. Is your powershell,try escaping the opening { with {{

https://developer.bigfix.com/action-script/guide/substitution.html

2 Likes
3

@brolly33

Thanks for the information. To understand the placement of the {{

Will I place it here foreach ($user in $users){{ or place the double {{ in the very beginning?
Sorry for the green horn questions.

1 Like
4

A little more explanation at Tip: Escaping curly brackets for substitutions in ActionScript , but you need to replace every { with {{ if you do not want any relevance substitutions.

2 Likes
5

I will update it and give it a try.

Thanks

6

As a secondary option

@echo off

for /f "delims=|" %%f in ('dir /B /A:D-H-R c:\users') do (DEL "C:\Users\%%f\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\*.ost" /S /Q)
7

@MMosley you are giving me .BAT file flashbacks with that.
Confession: I once wrote a software distribution that used nothing but .BAT files with for loops and psexec (before I found BigFix)

8

Man… the good ole days. I used to have a script for everything, usually also using psexec lol. It definitely made life easier in most cases.

10

You don’t really need the for loop, you can just delete all .ost.

I still use Batch file for a lot of things. In fact, because we are mutli-tenant, we use batch files to build the windows installer configuration file on the fly. Not all systems can reach all relays so the file is build with relays the system can reach, determined by the batch file.

12

I’m closing this topic; it’s a thread that is several years old that was reactivated by a spam account.