10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0
- Lesson 14 -
Using Public Folders
In this lesson, you learn about public folders: what they are and how to use
them.
Public folders are used to store items (files, company forms, or any other information)
that can be accessed by all the users on your Microsoft Exchange Server system. Public
folders are created at workstations by users, but they are stored on the server.
(Personal folders, covered in Lesson 13, are kept on the user's local hard drive.)
Understanding Public Folders
Public folders make it easy to distribute information to everyone in the organization.
You can place an item in a folder instead of sending it through e-mail to a long
list of users. It's a simple way to let everyone read an interesting text file about
some topic important to the company's well-being, to distribute the latest company
employee handbook, to circulate general announcements about company policies or company
events, or to distribute items to those employees who are working together on a project.
Each server in your Microsoft Exchange Server system holds the public folders
that have been created by the users attached to that server. Then, at regular periods
during each day, the public folders and their contents are replicated to all the
other servers in the organization. This way, every user can have access to every
folder, regardless of the folder's origination point.
When you see the display of public folders in your Microsoft Exchange Client window,
you can't tell the difference between public folders that were created on the server
on your site and public folders that were created at other remote servers and replicated
onto your own server. But it doesn't matter, because the replication function ensures
that there is a copy of every public folder on the server to which you're attached.
By default, no user of Microsoft Exchange Client is permitted to create a public
folder. An administrator must either make specific configuration changes to Microsoft
Exchange Server to permit the creation of public folders at certain workstations,
or create the public folders at the administrator's own workstation. This lesson
assumes that someone has been given the necessary rights to create them and that
there are some public folders in your system. (If you've been given creation rights,
see Lesson 15 for administration information.)
When you look at the display in the Folder pane of your Microsoft Exchange Client
window, the top level of public folders is a container folder named Public Folders
(see Figure 14.1). Under that folder is a subfolder named All Public Folders, which
contains all the public folders for the system. There may also be a Favorites folder
displayed. (Information about the Favorites folder is found in Lesson 16.)

Figure 14.1 The public folders are displayed in a hierarchy that starts
with a Public Folder container.
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Container Folder A folder that is designed specifically to hold other folders.
The icon for a container folder differs from that of a regular folder: It depicts
a folder sitting in a box.
Checking Access Permissions to Public Folders
To open a public folder and view its contents, you must have the necessary permissions
for reading a public folder. Likewise, you must have the necessary permissions if
you want to add items to a public folder. Company-wide folders are usually created
with these rights for every user. Project folders or folders created for specific
uses normally give rights to a user list that is associated with the project.
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Permissions In Microsoft Exchange Server, the administrator sets permissions
to spell out the tasks you are permitted to perform, such as reading and writing
permissions. Roles have been established that are specific combinations of permissions.
Understanding Roles
Roles are combinations of rights. Various combinations of rights have been
put together and assigned a name by Microsoft Exchange Server (and are in turn assigned
to users by a public folder administrator). These are the predefined roles and their
attendant rights:
- Owners have all permissions.
- Publishing Editors can create, read, edit, and delete items and create subfolders.
- Editors can create, read, edit, and delete items.
- Publishing Authors can create and read items; edit and delete the items they
create; and create subfolders.
- Authors can create and read items, and edit and delete the items they create.
- Reviewers can read items.
- Contributors can create items.
To see if you have permission to access a public folder, right-click the folder
and choose Properties from the shortcut menu to display the folder's Properties dialog
box and select the Summary tab (see Figure 14.2).

Figure 14.2 A Properties dialog box for a public folder.
Your role and the permissions attached to that role are displayed in the Properties
dialog box of each public folder. The dialog box also displays the name of the public
folder's owner. You can contact that person to get additional permissions.
Viewing and Working with Public Folder Contents
To view the items in a public folder, select that folder in the Folder pane to
display its contents in the Contents pane (see Figure 14.3).
To manipulate any of the items in a public folder, right-click the item to bring
up the shortcut menu (shown in Figure 14.4).

Figure 14.3 All the items contained in the public folder are displayed
in the Contents pane.

Figure 14.4 The shortcut menu lists all the operations you can perform
on an item.
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Quick Open The shortcut menu's choice of Open is the default action. So if
you want to open an item, just double-click it instead of right-clicking and choosing
Open.
Working with public folder items isn't much different from working with messages
or files from software applications. Table 14.1 lists the commands on the shortcut
menu, along with a description of each.
Table 14.1 Shortcut Menu Options
Command |
Function |
Open |
Launches the software that was used to prepare the item, which
in turn displays the item in its window. If the item is a standard message, the message
is displayed in the Exchange message window. |
Mark As Read |
Identifies the selected files, messages, or other items in
the folder as having been read or opened. |
Save As |
Saves the item in a different location. (The Save As dialog
box appears, so you can choose a location, a file name, and a file type.) |
Move |
Moves the item out of the current folder and into a different
folder in your Microsoft Exchange Client system. |
Copy |
Copies the item to another folder in your Microsoft Exchange
Client system. |
Print |
Prints the item. |
Reply to |
For a message, opens a message window Sender so you can send
a reply to the sender. |
Reply to All |
Opens a copy of the message that is pre-addressed to the sender
and all recipients of the original message. You can than write your response to the
message either within or above the original message. |
Post Reply in |
Enables you to respond to a message that This Folder requires
a specific form. |
Forward |
For a message, sends a copy to another user. |
Delete |
Deletes the item (if you have the correct permissions). |
Properties |
Displays the properties of the item. |
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Form A document created and used in Microsoft Exchange Server for a specific
purpose. Forms are attached to specific public folders and are used to limit the
way items are placed in a public folder. An example of a form is a vacation schedule,
an expense report, or any other document that requires you to fill out a preconfigured
form instead of entering data.
Adding Items to Public Folders
If you have permission to post to a public folder, you can add an item either
by copying the item from another folder in your Microsoft Exchange Client system,
or by copying a file created in a software application.
To add a file from your computer file system to an Exchange folder, open Explorer
while the Microsoft Exchange Client viewer is open. Then drag the file from its original
directory to the folder. (This system works for both Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0.)
The method in which public folders are implemented, the permissions given to users,
and the forms created for individual public folders are all a reflection of the policies
and philosophies of your organization. No two companies implement this feature the
same way. Your access to public folders will match the manner in which public folders
are adapted at your company.
In this lesson, you learned about public folders, how to access them, and how
to manipulate their contents. The next lesson teaches you how to administer public
folders that you have created.
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