Incoming Email Stuck in Drop Folder? PowerShell to the Rescue!

I had a weird issue a few months back working with incoming email in SharePoint 2010. I went through the whole process of enabling incoming, setting up the proper connectors in Exchange, and creating a list with an incoming email address. Everything appeared to be configured and working properly. However, emails were getting stuck in the drop folder on my SharePoint server. I checked Central Administration and the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming E-Mail was started on my servers. After much head scratching, I decided to dig into more details with my tool of choice, PowerShell!!

I figured I would start by just getting the incoming email service in PowerShell and see what I could find. The following like of PowerShell will get the Incoming Email Service Instances:

PS C: > Get-SPServiceInstance | ? {$_.Typename -eq “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming E-Mail”}

My results are below, and look at that, everything is disabled (it was a three server farm).

TypeName Status Id

——– —— —

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Disabled 903f6606-25b9-4366-8ffd-31ea9f3afb8d

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Disabled cf165f81-315e-4c6b-b6da-208bf60065a7

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Disabled 39f20e7a-fa4e-4e4b-9621-38335bc05faf

So, apparently, somehow my GUI and what was ACTUALLY running on disconnected and the incoming email services wasn’t actually running.

Time to fix it, again with PowerShell:

PS C: > Get-SPServiceInstance | ? {$_.Typename -eq “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming E-Mail”} | Start-SPServiceInstance

TypeName Status Id

——– —— —

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Provi… 903f6606-25b9-4366-8ffd-31ea9f3afb8d

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Provi… cf165f81-315e-4c6b-b6da-208bf60065a7

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Provi… 39f20e7a-fa4e-4e4b-9621-38335bc05faf

Give it a couple of minutes and run the script below once more:

PS C: > Get-SPServiceInstance | ? {$_.Typename -eq “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming E-Mail”}

TypeName Status Id

——– —— —

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Online 903f6606-25b9-4366-8ffd-31ea9f3afb8d

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Online cf165f81-315e-4c6b-b6da-208bf60065a7

Microsoft SharePoint Foundati… Online 39f20e7a-fa4e-4e4b-9621-38335bc05faf

Much Better! Once my Incoming Email Services were online all the email was getting picked up from my drop folder and placed in the appropriate list(s). Saved once again by PowerShell!