About public folders and Exchange Online

On this page:

Overview
Request resource rooms
Migrate data to a resource room
After migrating data to a resource room

Overview

Public folders are not available in the Indiana University tenant of Exchange Online, and Microsoft has been encouraging the depreciation of public folders for many years. For these reasons, UITS recommends replacing public folders with resource rooms. If you need assistance with this process, contact your local UITS support person.

Request resource rooms

Local UITS support people can request new resource rooms by using the Exchange Resource Room Request form. If you need more than two or three resource rooms, fill out the Excel sheet available on the same page and contact Tier 2, including the Excel file.

Migrate data to a resource room

Once the resource room has been created, you can use Outlook's Export/Import tool to manually migrate the public folder data to the resource room. You will need an on-premises account to export from public folders and import to on-premises mailboxes. If you need a new on-premises account (for example, for a group account), go to Your Accounts to request new accounts and view the ones you currently own.

For export instructions, see Back up your email.

For import instructions, see Import email, contacts, and calendar from an Outlook .pst file.

When exporting, you may be prompted to select the folders you wish to export (such as Inbox or Calendar). Be sure to export what you need.

After migrating data to a resource room

New resource rooms are created in on-premises Exchange and will be added to the Exchange Online migration schedule at a later date. However, once a resource room is populated with public folder data, you should start using it immediately, and the access rights to the public folder should be removed so that one data source is authoritative. Once public folder data has been moved to a resource room, reply in the existing ticket to Tier 2 Support to request the permissions to the public folders be removed or set to read only.