About Public Folders

The public information store contains public folders and messages that can be shared among multiple users and applications. A single public information store is shared by all users within a Microsoft Exchange Server organization, even if multiple servers are used.

The public information store consists of two branches: the interpersonal message (IPM) subtree and the non-IPM subtree. Contents of the IPM subtree are visible through the client, but contents of the non-IPM subtree are not visible. The following diagram shows the structure of the public information store.

Public information store architecture

Folders in the non-IPM subtree that are not visible to the user include:

• EFORMS registry This top-level folder contains forms in various languages.
• Offline Address Book folder This folder contains information that is needed to perform address book updates.
• Schedule+ Free/Busy Folder This folder contains a subfolder for each site with free/busy information for the users at that site. It is consulted when meetings are automatically scheduled or other such operations are performed.