XADM: How to Re-home Public Folders Using 5.5 Admin Program

ID: Q185043

The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Exchange Server, version 5.5

SUMMARY

This article explains how to re-home public folders to a particular Exchange Server computer, using the Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 Administrator program.

In some situations, public folders may be accidentally re-homed to another site, and this article should help in recovering from such a situation.


MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 has a number of new features designed to help with public folder re-homing situations. The Microsoft Exchange 5.5 Administrator program can re-home individual public folders to any server that contains a replica of the public folder. All subfolders of the public folder can then be automatically re-homed as well.

In order to re-home public folders using the Administrator program, you must be running the Exchange 5.5 Administrator program against an Exchange Server 5.5 computer. Also, this procedure assumes that you want the entire public folder sub-tree re-homed to the Exchange Server 5.5 computer.

The steps below assume that all the public folders were initially homed in the site ORIGINAL_SITE and have been accidentally re-homed to the site NEW_SITE. The name of the Exchange Server 5.5 computer in ORIGINAL_SITE is SRVPF55. All folders under a folder called "NorthAmerica" need to be re- homed back to ORIGINAL_SITE, and it's okay to have a replica of these folders on server SRVPF55.

  1. If an Exchange Server 5.5 computer does not exist in site ORIGINAL_SITE, add a new 5.5 server to the site, or upgrade an existing Exchange Server 4.0 or 5.0 computer to version 5.5. Assume this 5.5 server is called SRVPF55.


  2. Run the version 5.5 Microsoft Exchange Administrator program against server SRVPF55.


  3. Get properties of the Public Information Store object. The Public Information Store object is found under <Site>\Configurations\Servers\<Server Name>


  4. Go to the Instances property page of the Public Information Store properties.


  5. Search for the NorthAmerica folder in the list labeled Public Folders. You may need to select the site NEW_SITE in the Site list. Use the Folder path to make sure that you have found the correct public folder.


  6. After you have found the NorthAmerica folder, select it and click the Add button. This moves the folder to the list labeled "Folders on this Information Store".


  7. Click OK to close the property sheet.


  8. Press the F5 key to refresh the Administrator program.


  9. In the Administrator program, under the organization object, click the Folders object to expand it. Then click Public Folder. You should see the Public Folder hierarchy. Traverse the hierarchy until you reach the NorthAmerica folder.


  10. Select the NorthAmerica folder. On the File menu, select Properties. This brings up the properties of the folder.


  11. Go to the Advanced property page of the folder properties.


  12. From the "Home server" list, select SRVPF55.


  13. Click OK to close the property sheet. This re-homes the NorthAmerica folder to the server SRVPF55.


  14. Wait for about a minute.


  15. Press F5 in the Administrator program to refresh the data displayed.


  16. In the public folder hierarchy, select the NorthAmerica folder. On the File menu, select Properties to bring up the properties of the folder.


  17. Go to the Replicas page of the folder properties.


  18. Check the list on the right labeled "Replicate folders to". This list should include SRVPF55. Remove from this list any servers that you do not want all of the subfolders of the NorthAmerica folder replicated to.


  19. After you have verified the replica list, go to the General page of the folder properties.


  20. Select the setting labeled "Propagate these properties to all subfolders". (If this setting is not visible, either you are not using an Exchange 5.5 Administrator program, or the folder whose properties you have obtained does not have any subfolders.)


  21. Click OK. This brings up a dialog box titled "Subfolder Properties". Clear all options except Replicas.


  22. After selecting only the Replicas option, click OK. This starts a process to automatically modify the replica list of all subfolders of the NorthAmerica folder, with the replica list of the NorthAmerica folder. This results in a replica of all subfolders being added to the SRVPF55 server. This process may take up to several hours, depending on the number of subfolders. After this process is completed, all the data in the public folders whose replicas were added will start being replicated to the SRVPF55 server. This is an important point if the only other replicas of the public folders are on servers across slow links. This process may cause very high network utilization on these slow links.


  23. After the process has completed, refresh the Administrator program by pressing the F5 key.


  24. Get permissions of the NorthAmerica folder again.


  25. On the General page, select the setting labeled "Propagate these properties to all subfolders".


  26. Click OK. This brings up the Subfolder Properties dialog box. Clear all options except Home Server.


  27. Click OK. This starts a process to re-home all the subfolders of the NorthAmerica folder to the SRVPF55 server.


After this process has completed, all the subfolders will be re-homed to server SRVPF55. If the public folder permissions were lost during the accidental re-homing, this process does not restore the permissions.

NOTE: The contents of all the subfolders will be replicated to the server SRVPF55. This may affect network utilization.

NOTE: In order for you to perform the above steps, both the Administrator program and the server against which the Administrator program is running must be version 5.5.

The server on which the public folders have been accidentally re-homed does NOT have to be running version 5.5.

Advantages of using an Exchange Server 5.5 computer to re-home folders

Using the Exchange 5.5 Administrator program in conjunction with an Exchange Server 5.5 computer has the following advantages over other methods, such as using PFADMIN.EXE, to re-home public folders:

  • The amount of work needed to re-home entire public folder trees is greatly reduced.


  • All the work is done on the original site and there is no need to access the server on which the folders were accidentally re-homed. This may be useful if the server where the folders are re-homed is across a slow WAN link.


  • There is no need to add replicas of all folders to the server where the folders are re-homed. This eliminates the replication of the contents of all the public folders across a possibly slow network link.


Considering these advantages--if an Exchange Server 5.5 computer is not available in the original site, it may be useful to install one in the site if you need to re-home public folders.

Additional query words: rehome exfaqold

Keywords : XADM exc55
Version : winnt:5.5
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbhowto


Last Reviewed: November 4, 1999
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