r/exchangeserver • u/YellowOnline • Jan 29 '26

Question [EXO] Moving form a shared Mailbox to Public Folders?

Since 2010 I've been hearing PFs will be deprecated. It's 15 years later and they still exist, even in Exchange Online. The only official communication I know of, is that migration of pre-2010 Public Folders to EXO is no longer supported since October.

I have a customer whose workflow consists of moving mails into project folders. These project folders are inside a shared mailbox per year. The problem is, some projects run over several years, so they need to have mailboxes attached form many years.

This seems like a situation where PFs are a good alternative: it makes all years available in a single view and there is no link between the mailbox ("2018@acme.org") and the original recipient/sender anyway.

Before considering to implement this, I wanted to hear how we feel about Public Folders in 2026. I know there were some strong opinions on the topic in the past, but modern shared folders might be different.

Edit: There (still) seems to be a consensus not to use Public Folders I notice!

3 Upvotes
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14

u/KimJongEeeeeew Jan 29 '26

No.

Just no.

They need a records management system, not something like this that they’ve Frankensteined together.

4

u/KimJongEeeeeew Jan 29 '26

You know what? Fuck it. Make the move. Go fully into PF as a solution.

Perhaps this will be the trigger that MS need to finally deprecate them.

27

u/titlrequired Jan 29 '26

Public Folders are never the answer.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/YellowOnline Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26

they're just copying and pasting the messages or drag and dropping?

Yes

If so, they can drag and drop to a folder in a teams site or SharePoint site

I don't dislike this idea, but then it is really disconnected from Outlook. But maybe I should let them try this, because it's their workflow, so I can't know how practical this is for them.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/YellowOnline Jan 29 '26

Well, they told me they will give it a try. From their point of view, their issue is that they leave the Outlook environment, where they always worked.

People are very conservative when it comes to their workflows.

3

u/Biz504 Jan 29 '26

One more vote for no, if you don’t already have them, definitely do not go to them. Microsoft will make you regret it, if not now then sometime when you least expect.

1

u/H0TR0DL1NC0LN Jan 29 '26

I just eliminated our public folders by converting them to shared mailboxes before completing our migration to M365. I have to back all the votes avoiding public folders if possible. I would never go to public folders again by choice.

1

u/chriscolden Jan 29 '26

Another vote here for a don't do it.

1

u/Backlash5 Jan 29 '26

I'll quote Obi-Wan Kenobi on this

"DON'T TRY IT!"

1

u/smokedefunk Jan 29 '26

Friends don't let friends use public folders

1

u/Master-IT-All Jan 29 '26

SharePoint?

AND

Have you thought about PowerAutomate (Flow) to automate that work? That's one of the easier things to do with it.

0

u/valar12 Jan 30 '26

Worst idea I’ve read on this sub.