How to Import and Use Office 365 PowerShell Modules

Updated November 26, 2019

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Introduction

Office 365 Powershell provides modules you can use to automate Office 365 tasks. But to access these modules you need to connect to Office 365 Powershell.

In this guide I will use Office 365 and O365 interchangeably. I will also use PowerShell in place of PS and vise versa.

It goes without saying that you require internet connection to run commands in this guide! You will also need a valid Office 365 account.

Steps to Get and Use Office 365 PowerShell Modules

This is a step by step guide that walks you through how to connect to Office 365 Powershell to access the modules. The guide also has some examples of O365 commands.

1
Export Your User Name and Password to an Encrypted XML file

Before you can access Office 365 via PowerShell you need an account with the right permission to access O365.

You can provide the credentials directly when you connect to 365 via PS. But, for scripting purposes, it is better to export an encrypted version of the your users name and password to an XML file.

Here are the steps to export your user name and password to an encrypted XML file:

Type PowerShell in the search bar. Then right-click Windows PowerShell and select Run as administrator.

office 365 powershell - open PowerShell as administrator

At the PowerShell prompt, type this command. Then press Enter.

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

This opens a new PS session that permits you to run remote unsigned scripts. Without this, when you run the command that imports Office 365 PowerShell module, the command may fail.

office 365 powershell -run powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted command

Then type the this command and press enter.

Get-Credential <UserName@DomainName.com> | Export-CliXml -Path C:\PS\Get-Credential\O365loginCred.xml

Replace <UserName@DomainName.com> with your O365 username. The name MUST be in UPN format: UserName@DomainName.com. If you use the format DomainName\UserName, subsequent commands in this guide may fail.

When you execute the command, you will be prompted to enter the password of the account. Enter the password and click OK. If the command is successful, an XML file will be created in the specified path (see the second image below).

2
Import Office 365 PowerShell Modules

The next step is to connect to your O365 account via PowerShell and import O365 PS modules.

Here are the steps:

Still on the same PS command prompt, type this command. Then press enter.

$ImpCred = Import-Clixml C:\PS\Get-Credential\O365loginCred.xml -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

The command imports the encrypted XML file with your password and stores it in a variable called $ImpCred.

Next, execute this command…type, then enter.

$SessionOption = New-PSSessionOption -SkipRevocationCheck -SkipCACheck -SkipCNCheck

The command creates the required SessionOption needed in the next command. Then stores the result in $SessionOption variable.

In the next command, you will create a PS session to Office 365 PowerShell.

Here is the command. Type it then press enter.

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/" -Credential $ImpCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection -SessionOption $SessionOption -WarningAction SilentlyContinue -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

The command will delay a bit – may not be as fast as the other commands we have discussed so far.

The last command appears scary and long. But it performs a very simple task: it uses New-PSSession to make a remote PS connection to Office 365 PowerShell.

The next command will import Office 365 PowerShell modules into your current PS session.

To import the session you created into your PS console, type this command, then press enter:

Import-PSSession $Session -DisableNameChecking -AllowClobber -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

The command will take some time to run. While it is running, it will display the modules and commands it is importing. When the modules are imported completely, it will return the module details – highlighted in the second image below.

Office 365 PowerShell modules are now available for you to use! The next section will demo how to access the Cmdlets with some examples.

3
Run Office 365 Powershell Commands (With Examples)

Now that you have imported O365 PS modules into your current PS session you can run PowerShell commands directly on your Office 365 account.

This section demos some examples.

Lets begin by displaying all PS commands available in the imported module.

To do this, type this command and press enter.

Get-Command -Module tmp_ycvzopmw.1bq

Replace tmp_ycvzopmw.1bq with the module name shown in the last image. This name will be different every time you run the Import-PSSession command.

The result of the last command is a very long list…

To get a list of all users (and Mailboxes) in your Office 365 account, type the command below:

Warning!
DO NOT run this command in a production account with so many users. It may take too long to run.

Get-User

Here is the result returned by the command for my Office 365 account. For obvious reasons, I obscured the user names and mailboxes!

As I mentioned in my warning earlier, it is NOT recommended to run the Get-User command without any filters.

The recommended way to use this command is to return a particular user or group of users. For example, to return just my name, I will use the command below: