Orpaned Public Folders

Public Folders folders can be contrary

We make extensive use of public folders.  Most offices have a dedicated public folder structure. Every distribution list we create has a corresponding public folder as a member.  At the end of a contract we typically supply these messages to the client by exporting them to a PST.  Recently I received a helpdesk ticket for one of our offices who could not get export to work. 

The error was “This folder cannot be opened because there is a configuration problem with the server.”

I completed the usual checks for public folders. The default permissions were correct. Anonymous permissions existed and were configured correctly.  The folder had a replica. In fact there were no issues copying mail from the folder into a PST.

I did find that the alias was “mail. Our default address policy applies the alias to the SMTP properties to create addresses.  The folder already had a unique email address from being mail enabled when it was hosted in Exchange 2003. Adding a unique alias simply cause the policy to add another SMTP address to the folder.

Using the exchange shell I gave myself the Owner role and started checking its properties. What I found was that the folder’s location was very strange.  Our folder paths typically are Location\Clients\Contract Code and a “mail” subfolder. This was appeared to be randomly generated numbers.

Checking another folder gave similar results so I started checking the folder path working my way back up the chain.  What I found was that I was unable to display the contents of the Clients folder.  Pulling up the folder properties in the Exchange Shell I found that the folder didn’t have any replicas. Once I added a replica and waited for the store cached to refresh I was able to see the correct folder location and complete an export.