Microsoft has been hinting at the removal of public folders from Exchange for a few years now. But many organizations are reluctant to move because of issues such as cost, dependencies, or simply no decent alternative for the functionality that public folders provide for them.

So has your organization managed to free yourself from public folders? Or do you still have them in your Exchange environment? Do you have plans to migrate away from them?

Please vote in the poll below, and if you wish to expand on your answer feel free to leave a comment below.

[poll id=”8″]

About the Author

Paul Cunningham

Paul is a former Microsoft MVP for Office Apps and Services. He works as a consultant, writer, and trainer specializing in Office 365 and Exchange Server. Paul no longer writes for Practical365.com.

Comments

  1. Daniel

    I can’t wait until the day we get rid of Public Folders. We’re currently upgrading from 2003 to 2010, and have to move hundreds of gigabytes of Public Folder emails across. We’re going to be moving to a proper Email & Document Management solution within the next year. It can’t come soon enough.

    Which reminds me, is there anything specific you’d need to do to remove or turn off Public Folder functionality in Exchange 2010 once you’ve stopped using them?

  2. Phil

    we still have public folders! I would very happily move away from them if anyone can suggest a better way of storing/accessing “Canned” emails for our Customer Service Reps. Any suggestions?

    1. Chris Brown

      A SharePoint library with a whole bunch of *.oft’s in it which is synced back into Outlook? Same functionality. (By same I mean lots lots more)

      1. Phil

        True, but we don’t use SharePoint 🙁

      1. Phil

        Would the free version do it? I doubt I will get approval for anything that costs money!

      2. Chris Brown

        It will do it, yes, but be prepared for some hardware outlay if you get serious about it. That said, you should get serious about getting rid of PFs. Even if you move to simple network shares, Public Folders are simply not going to be around much longer. You’ll likely find yourself banging your head against a wall when trying to upgrade to Exchange vNext, which probably won’t support them.

      3. Phil

        It won’t integrate with Outlook though? Believe me… I want very much to get rid of public folders, but I am having trouble convincing Customer Service team of other solutions! They love the public folders!

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