Before you run to restore that deleted Public Folder from tape don’t forget ExFolders.
I recently had a situation where someone had inadvertently deleted a Public Folder. I had previously downloaded ExFolders for another problem and remembered I had this on the server. I quickly connected to the Public Folders, showed all deleted folders, and recovered in a snap. The user had the folder immediately.
One pitfall, make sure you have the correct version of ExFolders for your Exchange environment. This includes service pack level. So if you recently updated your Exchange environment your version of ExFolders might now be outdated.
The link to the latest version at the time of this post is below.
Downloaded ExFolders for Exchange 2010 SP1 and later here.
- Open ExFolders (make sure that you are opening it from the Exchange Bin folder)
- Select File and then Connect
- Pick Public Folders or Mailboxes
- Under Global Catalog click Select and pick an appropriate Global Catalog server.
- Under Databases click Select and pick the desired database you are trying to recover from.
- Click Ok.
- Expand to where you need to recover.
- On the parent folder, right-click and select Show Deleted Subfolders.
- Deleted folders will show up in RED. Select the folder you wish to recover, right-click and select Recover Folder.
- If you hit F5 to refresh (or View >> Refresh) the folder should turn from RED to BLACK.
- Your folder is now recovered.
If you get an error stating that Recovery Failed or Partially Failed you will need to recover from backups.
Since installing 2010 SP3 I dont get any Deleted Subfolders displaying.
Hey Gordon,
I confirmed this still works in Service Pack 3. Did you right click the parent folder and select “Show Deleted Subfolders”. As soon as you do this any child subfolders should show in red.
This works for Public Folders, but not Mailboxes. Before SP3 it worked identically on both.
Ah understood. Do you have Full Mailbox Access to the user in question? By default members of Organization Management don’t actually have this permission.
Yea the user account being used has full mailbox access. I use exfolders a lot, and pfdavadmin before it, in my org, but something seems to have changed with SP3 and mailboxes.
Yep. I am seeing the same thing. And little information on the web about it. Seems like it might be deprecated in SP3. Most are recommending to perform a restore from backup with regard to mailbox items.
Thanks for confirming.
The benefit of using exfolders was the full folder restore from the dumpster. Restore from backup and you will have lost the items delivered post backup, and Outlook only allows single item restore, not folder.
I deployed a new mailbox server and left it at SP2 RU6, but it’s still broken. I guess it must be a change in the CAS that’s broken it.
It may have also been broken since the schema update that SP3 includes for coexistence with Exchange 2013. Which makes sense, because the Public Folder Database is gone in 2013.
Yeah I did exactly that but I don’t see the deleted folders in my mailbox (not a public folder, that works fine)