Orphaned Public Folders

[flagatorgrl]

I don't know if this is an Outlook 2000 problem or Exchange 5.5, so I'm starting here. Through what I believe to be an incorrect installation, one user wound up using the Public Directory location for his personal email. I did not discover this until he left the company and his accounts were deleted. Now I am unable to delete these public directories. I look at properties and no one is listed as the owner. I can't figure out how to assign an owner and delete these files.

Any help would be appreciated.

Nancy
Advanced Information Engineering Services
A Division of General Dynamics

 

[zbnet]

You're using a strange mix of terms (orphaned PFs actually refers to a different sitaution), but what I think you mean is you have some public folders that have no owner? If so, using Exchange Admin you can browse the PF hierarchy, find the folders, bring up Properties for each, then click the Client Permissions button. This will allow you to set a mailbox or DL as Owner of these PFs, which will allow an OL client logged in to such an account to delete the PFs.

 

[TruBlu01]

Run the exchange Consistency Adjuster. That's it's main function.

 

[zbnet]

The consistency adjuster will rehome any public folders that don't have a home server, but that's a different issue: it's impossible to orphan (that is, remove the home server replica of) a public folder simply by deleting a user mailbox.

Running the consistency adjuster could cause bigger problems if Dir Rep is broken, because it will rehome any public folders to the server it is run that it can't see the home server of. In large organisations this can cause big problems.

 

[lushone]

You can use the Exchange Resource Kit PFAdmin tool to add permissions to the public folder. To do so:
Log on with the Exchange Server Service Account, and using a profile that has the Exchange Server Service Account as owner, run PFAdmin to change the permissions.
At a command prompt, type the following command:
pfadmin.exe profile_name SETACL foldername\foldername default owner anonymous owner

Now permissions for the folder are set so that all users can view them.

 

[flagatorgrl]

My network admin figured it out without using any of these services. He simply deleted the files from the Post Office after identifying them by file size. We are a very small network, so this was the only publicly accessed folder in existence.

Thanks for all the suggestions. We will take them into consideration for future solutions.

Nancy